4. Magic for ascertaining the truth about the future or the distant
present--clairvoyance. This is called 'The Young Man Bound and
Bounding,' from the widely-spread habit of tying-up the limbs of the
medium, and from his customary convulsions.
To all of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and
aid of 'spirits' is believed to be necessary, with, perhaps, the
exception of the sportive or conjuring class. A spirit helps to
cure and helps to kill. The free spirit of the clairvoyant in
bondage meets other spirits in its wanderings. Anthropologists,
taking it for granted that 'spirits' are a mere 'animistic
hypothesis'--their appearances being counterfeited by imposture--
have paid little attention to the practical magic of savages, as far
as it is not merely sympathetic, and based on the doctrine that
'like cures like'.
Thus Mr. Sproat, in his excellent work, Scenes and Studies of Savage
Life, frankly admits that in Vancouver Island the trickery and
hocus-pocus of Aht sorcery were so repugnant to him that he could
not occupy himself with the topic. Some other travellers have been
more inquisitive; unlettered sojourners among the wilder peoples
have shared their superstitions, and consulted their oracles, while
one or two of the old Jesuit missionaries were close and puzzled
observers of their 'mediumship'.
Thus enough is known to show that savage spiritualism wonderfully
resembles, even in minute details, that of modern mediums and
seances, while both have the most striking parallels in the old
classical thaumaturgy.
This uniformity, to a certain extent, is not surprising, for savage,
classical, and modern spiritualism all repose on the primaeval
animistic hypothesis as their metaphysical foundation. The origin
of this hypothesis--namely, that disembodied intelligences exist and
are active--is explained by anthropologists as the result of early
reasonings on life, death, sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, the
phenomena of epilepsy, and the illusions of starvation. This
scientific theory is, in itself, unimpeachable; normal phenomena,
psychological and physical, might suggest most of the animistic
beliefs. {35}
At the same time 'veridical hallucinations,' if there are any, and
clairvoyance, if there is such a thing, would do much to originate
and confirm the animistic opinions. Meanwhile, the extraordinary
similarity of savage and classical spiritualistic rites, with the
corresponding similarity of alleged modern phenomena, raises
problems which it is more easy to state than to solve. For example,
such occurrences as 'rappings,' as the movement of untouched
objects, as the lights of the seance room, are all easily feigned.
But that ignorant modern knaves should feign precisely the same
raps, lights, and movements as the most remote and unsophisticated
barbarians, and as the educated Platonists of the fourth century
after Christ, and that many of the other phenomena should be
identical in each case, is certainly noteworthy. This kind of
folklore is the most persistent, the most apt to revive, and the
most uniform. We have to decide between the theories of independent
invention; of transmission, borrowing, and secular tradition; and of
a substratum of actual fact.
Thus, either the rite of binding the sorcerer was invented, for no
obvious reason, in a given place, and thence reached the Australian
blacks, the Eskimo, the Dene Hareskins, the Davenport Brothers, and
the Neoplatonists; or it was independently evolved in each of
several remote regions; or it was found to have some actual effect--
what we cannot guess--on persons entranced. We are hampered by not
knowing, in our comparatively rational state of development, what
strange things it is natural for a savage to invent. That spirits
should knock and rap seems to us about as improbable an idea as
could well occur to the fancy. Were we inventing a form for a
spirit's manifestations to take, we never should invent _that_. But
what a savage might think an appropriate invention we do not know.
Meanwhile we have the mediaeval and later tales of rapping, some of
which, to be frank, have never been satisfactorily accounted for on
any theory. But, on the other hand, each of us might readily invent
another common 'manifestation'--the _wind_ which is said to
accompany the spirit.
The very word spiritus suggests air in motion, and the very idea of
abnormal power suggests the trembling and shaking of the place
wherein it is present. Yet, on the other side, the 'cold non-
natural wind' of seances, of Swedenborg, and of a hundred stories,
old or new, is undeniably felt by some sceptical observers, even on
occasions where no professional charlatan is engaged. As to the
trembling and shaking of the house or hut, where the spirit is
alleged to be, we shall examine some curious evidence, ancient and
modern, savage and civilised. So of the other phenomena. Some seem
to be of easy natural invention, others not so; and, in the latter
case, independent evolution of an idea not obvious is a difficult
hypothesis, while transmission from the Pole to Australia, though
conceivable, is apt to give rise to doubt.
Meanwhile, one phenomenon, which is usually said to accompany others
much more startling, may now be held to have won acceptance from
science. This is what the Dene Hareskins call the Sleep of the
Shadow, that is, the Magical Sleep, the hypnotic trance. Savages
are well acquainted with this abnormal condition, and with means of
producing it, and it is at the bottom of all their more mysterious
non-sympathetic magic. Before Mesmer, and even till within the last
thirty years, this phenomenon, too, would have been scouted; now it
is a commonplace of physiology. For such physical symptoms as
introverted eyes in seers we need look no further than Martin's
account of the second-sighted men, in his book on the Hebrides. The
phenomenon of anaesthesia, insensibility to pain, in trance, is not
unfamiliar to science, but that red-hot coals should not burn a seer
or medium is, perhaps, less easily accepted; while science,
naturally, does not recognise the clairvoyance, and still less the
'spiritual' attendants of the seer in the Sleep of the Shadow.
Nevertheless, classical, modern, and savage spiritualists are agreed
in reporting these last and most startling phenomena of the magic
slumber in certain cases.
Beginning with what may be admitted as possible, we find that the
Dene Hareskins practise a form of healing under hypnotic or mesmeric
treatment. {38} The physician (who is to be pitied) begins by a
three days' fast. Then a 'magic lodge,' afterwards to be described,
is built for him in the forest. Here he falls into the Sleep of the
Shadow; the patient is then brought before him. In the lodge, the
patient confesses his sins to his doctor, and when that ghostly
friend has heard all, he sings and plays the tambour, invoking the
spirit to descend on the sick man. The singing of barbarous songs
was part of classical spiritualism; the Norse witch, in The Saga of
Eric the Red, insisted on the song of Warlocks being chanted, which
secured the attendance of 'many powerful spirits'; and modern
spiritualists enliven their dark and dismal programme by songs.
Presently the Hareskin physician blows on the patient, and bids the
malady quit him. He also makes 'passes' over the invalid till he
produces trance; the spirit is supposed to assist. Then the spirit
extracts the _sin_ which caused the suffering, and the illness is
cured, after the patient has been awakened by a loud cry. In all
this affair of confession one is inclined to surmise a mixture of
Catholic practice, imitated from the missionaries. It is also not,
perhaps, impossible that hypnotic treatment may occasionally have
been of some real service.
Turning to British Guiana, where, as elsewhere, hysterical and
epileptic people make the best mediums, or 'Peay-men,' we are
fortunate in finding an educated observer who submitted to be
peaied. Mr. Im Thurn, in the interests of science, endured a savage
form of cure for headache. The remedy was much worse than the
disease. In a hammock in the dark, attended by a peay-man armed
with several bunches of green boughs, Mr. Im Thurn lay, under a vow
not to touch whatever might touch him. The peay-men kept howling
questions to the kenaimas, or spirits, who answered. 'It was a
clever piece of ventriloquism and acting.'
'Every now and then, through the mad din, there was a sound, at
first low and indistinct, and then gathering in volume, as if some
big, winged thing came from far towards the house, passed through
the roof, and then settled heavily on the floor; and again, after an
interval, as if the same winged thing rose and passed away as it had
come,' while the air was sensibly stirred. A noise of lapping up
some tobacco-water set out for the kenaimas was also audible. The
rustling of wings, and the thud, 'were imitated, as I afterwards
found, by skilfully shaking the leafy boughs, and then dashing them
suddenly against the ground'. Mr. Im Thurn bit one of the boughs
which came close to his face, and caught leaves in his teeth. As a
rule he lay in a condition scarcely conscious: 'It seems to me that
my spirit was as nearly separated from my body as is possible in any
circumstances short of death. Thus it appears that the efforts of
the peay-man were directed partly to the separation of his own
spirit from his body, and partly to the separation of the spirit
from the body of his patient, and that in this way spirit holds
communion with spirit.' But Mr. Im Thurn's headache was not
alleviated! The whirring noise occurs in the case of the Cock Lane
Ghost (1762), in Iamblichus, in some 'haunted houses,' and is
reported by a modern lady spiritualist in a book which provokes
sceptical comments. Now, had the peay tradition reached Cock Lane,
or was the peay-man counterfeiting, very cleverly, some real
phenomenon? {40}
We may next examine cases in which, the savage medium being
entranced, spirits come to him and answer questions. Australia is
so remote, and it is so unlikely that European or American
spiritualists suggested their ideas to the older blacks (for
mediumship seems to be nearly extinct since the settling of the
country), that any transmission of such notions to the Black Fellows
must be very ancient. Our authorities are Mr. Brough Smyth, in
Aborigines of Victoria (i. 472), and Messrs. Fison and Howitt, in
Kamilaroi and Kurnai, who tell just the same tale. The spirits in
Victoria are called Mrarts, and are understood to be the souls of
Black Fellows dead and gone, not demons unattached. The mediums,
now very scarce, are Birraarks. They were consulted as to things
present and future. The Birraark leaves the camp, the fire is kept
low, and some one 'cooees' at intervals. 'Then a noise is heard.
The narrator here struck a book against the table several times to
describe it.' This, of course, is 'spirit-rapping'. The knocks
have a home among the least cultivated savages, as well as in
mediaeval and modern Europe. Then whistles are heard, a phenomenon
lavishly illustrated in certain seances held at Rio de Janeiro {41a}
where children were mediums. The spiritual whistle is familiar to
Glanvil and to Homer. Mr. Wesley, at Epworth (1716), noted it among
all the other phenomena. The Mrarts are next heard 'jumping down,'
like the kenaimas. Questions are put to them, and they answer.
They decline, very naturally, to approach a bright fire. The medium
(Birraark) is found entranced, either on the ground where the Mrarts
have been talking, or at the top of a tree, very difficult to climb,
'and up which there are no marks of any one having climbed'. The
blacks, of course, are peculiarly skilled in detecting such marks.
In maleficent magic, as among the Dene Hareskins, the Australian
sorcerer has 'his head, body, and limbs wound round with stringy
bark cords'. {41b} The enchantment is believed to drag the victim,
in a trance, towards the sorcerer. This binding is customary among
the Eskimo, and, as Mr. Myers has noted, was used in the rites
described by the Oracles in 'trance utterances,' which Porphyry
collected in the fourth century. Whether the binding was thought to
restrain the convulsions of the mediums, or whether it was,
originally, a 'test condition,' to prevent the medium from cheating
(as in modern experiments), we cannot discover. It does not appear
to be in use among the Maoris, whose speciality is 'trance
utterance'.
A very picturesque description of a Maori seance is given in Old New
Zealand. {42} The story loses greatly by being condensed. A
popular and accomplished young chief had died in battle, and his
friends asked the Tohunga, or medium, to call him back. The chief
was able to read and write; he had kept a journal of remarkable
events, and that journal, though 'unceasingly searched for,' had
disappeared. This was exactly a case for a test, and that which was
given would have been good enough for spiritualists, though not for
more reasonable human beings. In the village hall, in flickering
firelight, the friends, with the English observer, the 'Pakeha
Maori,' were collected. The medium, by way of a 'cabinet,' selected
the darkest corner. The fire burned down to a red glow. Suddenly
the spirit spoke, 'Salutation to my tribe,' and the chief's sister,
a beautiful girl, rushed, with open arms, into the darkness; she was
seized and held by her friends. The gloom, the tears, the sorrow,
nearly overcame the incredulity of the Englishman, as the Voice
came, 'a strange, melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing
into a hollow vessel'. 'It is well with me,' it said; 'my place is
a good place.' They asked of their dead friends; the hollow answers
replied, and the Englishman 'felt a strange swelling of the chest'.
The Voice spoke again: 'Give my large pig to the priest,' and the
sceptic was disenchanted. He now thought of the test. '"We cannot
find your book," I said; "where have you concealed it?" The answer
immediately came: "Between the Tahuhu of my house and the thatch,
straight over you as you go into the door".' Here the brother
rushed out. 'In five minutes he came back, _with the book in his
hand_.' After one or two more remarks the Voice came, '"Farewell!"
_from deep beneath the ground_. "Farewell!" again _from high in
air_. "Farewell!" once more came moaning through the distant
darkness of the night. The deception was perfect. "A
ventriloquist," said I, "or--or, _perhaps_ the devil."' The seance
had an ill end: the chief's sister shot herself.
This was decidedly a well-got-up affair for a colonial place. The
Maori oracles are precisely like those of Delphi. In one case a
chief was absent, was inquired for, and the Voice came, 'He will
return, yet not return'. Six months later the chiefs friends went
to implore him to come home. They brought him back a corpse; they
had found him dying, and carried away the body. In another case,
when the Maori oracle was consulted as to the issue of a proposed
war, it said: 'A desolate country, a desolate country, a desolate
country!' The chiefs, of course, thought the _other_ country was
meant, but they were deceived, as Croesus was by Delphi, when he was
told that he 'would ruin a great empire'. In yet another case, the
Maoris were anxious for the spirits to bring back a European ship,
on which a girl had fled with the captain. The Pakeha Maori was
present at this seance, and heard the 'hollow, mysterious whistling
Voice, "The ship's nose I will batter out on the great sea"'. Even
the priest was puzzled, this, he said, was clearly a deceitful
spirit, or atua, like those of which Porphyry complains, like most
of them in fact. But, ten days later, the ship came back to port;
she had met a gale, and sprung a leak in the bow, called, in Maori,
'the nose' (ihu). It is hardly surprising that some Europeans used
to consult the oracle.
Possibly some spiritualists may take comfort in these anecdotes, and
allege that the Maori mediums were 'very powerful'. This is said to
have been the view taken by some American believers, in a very
curious case, reported by Kohl, but the tale, as he tells it, cannot
possibly be accurate. However, it illustrates and strangely
coincides with some stories related by the Jesuit, Pere Lejeune, in
the Canadian Mission, about 1637. The instances bear both on
clairvoyance and on the force which is said to shake houses as well
as to lift tables, in the legends of the modern thaumaturgists. We
shall take Kohl's tale before those of the old Jesuit. Kohl first
describes the 'Medicine Lodge,' already alluded to in the account of
Dene Hareskin magic.
The 'lodge' answers to what spiritualists call 'the cabinet,'
usually a place curtained off in modern practice. Behind this the
medium now gets up his 'materialisations,' and other cheap
mysteries. The classical performers of the fourth century also knew
the advantage of a close place, {45a} 'where the power would not be
scattered'. This idea is very natural, granting the 'power'. The
modern Ojibway 'close place,' or lodge, like those seen by old
Jesuit fathers, 'is composed of stout posts, connected with basket-
work, and covered with birch bark. It is tall and narrow, and
resembles a chimney. It is very firmly built, and two men, even if
exerting their utmost strength, would be unable to move, shake, or
bend it.' {45b} On this topic Kohl received information from a
gentleman who 'knew the Indians well, and was even related to them
through his wife'. He, and many other white people thirty years
before, saw a Jossakeed, or medium, crawl into such a lodge as Kohl
describes, beating his tambour. 'The entire case began gradually
trembling, shaking, and oscillating slowly amidst great noise. . . .
It bent back and forwards, up and down, like the mast of a vessel in
a storm. I could not understand how those movements could be
produced by a man inside, as we could not have caused them from the
exterior.' Two voices, 'both entirely different,' were then heard
within. 'Some spiritualists' (here is the weakest part of the
story) 'who were present explained it through modern spiritualism.'
Now this was not before 1859, when Kohl's book appeared in English,
and modern spiritualism, as a sect of philosophy, was not born till
1848, so that, thirty years before 1859, in 1829, there were no
modern spiritualists. This, then, is absurd. However, the tale
goes on, and Kohl's informant says that he knew the Jossakeed, or
medium, who had become a Christian. On his deathbed the white man
asked him how it was done: 'now is the time to confess all
truthfully'. The converted one admitted the premisses--he was
dying, a Christian man--but, 'Believe me, I did not deceive you at
that time. I did not move the lodge. It was shaken by the power of
the spirits. I could see a great distance round me, and believed I
could recognise the most distant objects.' This 'with an expression
of simple truth'. It is interesting, but the interval of thirty
years is a naked impossibility. In 1829 there were queer doings in
America. Joe Smith's Mormons 'spoke with tongues,' like Irving's
congregation at the same time, but there were no modern
spiritualists. Kohl's informant should have said 'ten years ago,'
if he wanted his anecdote to be credited, and it is curious that
Kohl did not notice this circumstance.
We now come to the certainly honest evidence of the Pere Lejeune,
the Jesuit missionary. In the Relations de la Nouvelle France
(1634), Lejeune discusses the sorcerers, who, as rival priests, gave
him great trouble. He describes the Medicine Lodge just as Kohl
does. The fire is put out, of course, the sorcerer enters, the
lodge shakes, voices are heard in Montagnais and Algonkin, and the
Father thought it all a clumsy imposture. The sorcerer, in a very
sportsmanlike way, asked him to go in himself and try what he could
make of it. 'You'll find that your body remains below and your soul
mounts aloft.' The cautious Father, reflecting that there were no
white witnesses, declined to make the experiment. This lodge was
larger than those which Kohl saw, and would have held half a dozen
men. This was in 1634; by 1637 Pere Lejeune began to doubt whether
his theory that the lodge was shaken by the juggler would hold
water. Two Indians--one of them a sorcerer, Pigarouich, 'me
descouvrant avec grande sincerite toutes ses malices'--'making a
clean breast of his tricks'--vowed that they did not shake the
lodge--that a great wind entered fort promptement et rudement, and
they added that the 'tabernacle' (as Lejeune very injudiciously
calls the Medicine Lodge), 'is sometimes so strong that a single man
can hardly stir it.' The sorcerer was a small weak man. Lejeune
himself noted the strength of the structure, and saw it move with a
violence which he did not think a man could have communicated to it,
especially not for such a length of time. He was assured by many
(Indian) witnesses that the tabernacle was sometimes laid level with
the ground, and again that the sorcerer's arm and legs might be seen
projecting outside, while the lodge staggered about--nay, more, the
lodge would rock and sway after the juggler had left it. As usual,
there was a savage, Auiskuouaskousit, who had seen a juggler rise in
air out of the structure, while others, looking in, saw that he was
absent. St. Theresa had done equal marvels, but this does not occur
to the good Father.
The savage with the long name was a Christian catechumen, and yet he
stood to it that he had seen a sorcerer disappear before his very
eyes, like the second-sighted Highlander in Kirk's Secret
Commonwealth (1691). 'His neibours often perceaved this man to
disappear at a certane place, and about one hour after to become
visible.' It would be more satisfactory if the Father had seen
these things himself, like Mrs. Newton Crosland, who informs the
world that, when with Robert Chambers and other persons of sanity,
she felt a whole house violently shaken, trembling, and thrilling in
the presence of a medium--not a professional, but a young lady
amateur. Here, of course, we greatly desire the evidence of Robert
Chambers. Spirits came to Swedenborg with a wind, but it was only
strong enough to flutter papers; 'the cause of which,' as he remarks
with naivete, 'I do not yet understand'. If Swedenborg had gone
into a Medicine Lodge, no doubt, in that 'close place,' the
phenomena would have been very much more remarkable. In 1853 Pere
Arnaud visited the Nasquapees, and describes a seance. 'The
conjurers shut themselves up in a little lodge, and remain for a few
minutes in a pensive attitude, cross-legged. Soon the lodge begins
to move like a table turning, and replies by bounds and jumps to the
questions which are put to the conjurer.' {48} The experiment might
be tried with a modern medium.
Father Lejeune, in 1637, gives a case which reminds us of Home.
According to Home, and to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and other witnesses, when
'in power' he could not only handle live coals without being burned,
but he actually placed a large glowing coal, about the size of a
cricket-ball, on the pate of Mr. S. C. Hall, where it shone redly
through Mr. Hall's white locks, but did him no manner of harm. Now
Father Pijart was present, tesmoin oculaire, when a Huron medicine-
man heated a stone red hot, put it in his mouth, and ran round the
cabin with it, without receiving any harm. Father Brebeuf,
afterwards a most heroic martyr, sent the stone to Father Lejeune;
it bore the marks of the medicine-man's teeth, though Father Pijart,
examining the man, found that lips and tongue had no trace of burn
or blister. He reasonably concluded that these things could not be
done 'sans l'operation de quelque Demon'. That an excited patient
should not feel fire is, perhaps, admissible, but that it should not
scorch either Mr. Hall, or Home, or the Huron, is a large demand on
our credulity. Still, the evidence in this case (that of Mr.
Crookes and Lord Crawford) is much better than usual.
It would be strange if practices analogous to modern 'table-turning'
did not exist among savage and barbaric races. Thus Mr. Tylor, in
Primitive Culture (ii. 156), quotes a Kutuchtu Lama who mounted a
bench, and rode it, as it were, to a tent where the stolen goods
were concealed. The bench was believed, by the credulous Mongols,
to carry the Lama! Among the Manyanja of Africa thefts are detected
by young men holding sticks in their hands. After a sufficient
amount of incantation, dancing, and convulsions, the sticks became
possessed, the men 'can hardly hold them,' and are dragged after
them in the required directions. {50a} These examples are analogous
to the use of the Divining Rod, which is probably moved
unconsciously by honest 'dowsers'; 'sometimes they believe that they
can hardly hold it'. These are cases of movement of objects in
contact with human muscles, and are therefore not at all mysterious
in origin. A regular case of movement _without_ contact was
reported from Thibet, by M. Tscherepanoff, in 1855. The modern
epidemic of table-turning had set in, when M. Tscherepanoff wrote
thus to the Abeille Russe: {50b} 'The Lama can find stolen objects
by following a table which flies before him'. But the Lama, after
being asked to trace an object, requires an interval of some days,
before he sets about finding it. When he is ready he sits on the
ground, reading a Thibetan book, in front of a small square table,
on which he rests his hands. At the end of half an hour he rises
and lifts his hands from the surface of the table: presently the
table also rises from the ground, and follows the direction of his
hand. The Lama elevates his hand above his head, the table reaches
the level of his eyes: the Lama walks, the table rushes before him
in the air, so rapidly that he can scarcely keep up with its flight.
The table then spins round, and falls on the earth, the direction in
which it falls, indicates that in which the stolen object is to be
sought. M. Tscherepanoff says that he saw the table fly about forty
feet, and fall. The stolen object was not immediately discovered,
but a Russian peasant, seeing the line which the table took,
committed suicide, and the object was found in his hut. The date
was 1831. M. Tscherepanoff could not believe his eyes, and searched
in vain for an iron wire, or other mechanism, but could find nothing
of the sort. This anecdote, if it does not prove a miracle,
illustrates a custom. {51}
As to clairvoyance among savages, the subject is comparatively
familiar. Montezuma's priests predicted the arrival of the
Spaniards long before the event. On this point, in itself well
vouched for, Acosta tells a story which illustrates the identity of
the 'astral body,' or double, with the ordinary body. In the witch
stories of Increase Mather and others, where the possessed sees the
phantasm of the witch, and strikes it, the actual witch proves to be
injured. Story leads to story, and Mr. Thomas Hardy somewhere tells
one to this effect. A farmer's wife, a woman of some education,
fell asleep in the afternoon, and dreamed that a neighbour of hers,
a woman, was sitting on her chest. She caught at the figure's arm
in her dream, and woke. Later in the day she met her neighbour, who
complained of a pain in the arm, just where the farmer's wife seized
it in her dream. The place mortified and the poor lady died. To
return to Montezuma. An honest labourer was brought before him, who
made this very tough statement. He had been carried by an eagle
into a cave, where he saw a man in splendid dress sleeping heavily.
Beside him stood a burning stick of incense such as the Aztecs used.
A voice announced that this sleeper was Montezuma, prophesied his
doom, and bade the labourer burn the slumberer's face with the
flaming incense stick. The labourer reluctantly applied the flame
to the royal nose, 'but he moved not, nor showed any feeling'. On
this anecdote being related to Montezuma, he looked on his own face
in a mirror, and 'found that he was burned, the which he had not
felt till then'. {52}
On the Coppermine River the medicine-man, according to Hearne,
prophesies of travellers, like the Highland second-sighted man, ere
they appear. The Finns and Lapps boast of similar powers. Scheffer
is copious on the clairvoyant feats of Lapps in trance. The Eskimo
Angakut, when bound with their heads between their legs, cause
luminous apparitions, just as was done by Mr. Stainton Moses, and by
the mediums known to Porphyry and Iamblichus; the Angakut also send
their souls on voyages, and behold distant lands. One of the oddest
Angekok stories in Rink's Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo (p.
324) tells how some children played at magic, making 'a dark
cabinet,' by hanging jackets over the door, to exclude the light.
'The slabs of the floor were lifted and rushed after them:' a case
of 'movement of objects without physical contact'. This phenomenon
in future attended the young medium's possessions, even when he was
away from home. This particular kind of manifestation, so very
common in trials for witchcraft, and in modern spiritualistic
literature, does not appear to prevail much among savages. Persons
otherwise credible and sane tell the authorities of the Psychical
Society that, with only three amateurs present, things are thrown
about, and objects are brought from places many miles distant, and
tossed on the table. These are technically termed apports. The
writer knows a case in which this was attested by a witness of the
most unimpeachable character. But savages hardly go so far. Bishop
Callaway has an instance in which 'spirits' tossed objects into the
midst of a Zulu circle, but such things are not usual. Savages also
set out food for the dead, but they scarcely attain to the
credulity, or are granted the experience, of a writer in the Medium.
{53} This astonishing person knew a familiar spirit. At dinner,
one day, an empty chair began to move, 'and in answer to the
question whether it would have some dinner, said "Yes"'. It chose
croquets de pomme de terre, which were placed on the chair in a
spoon, lest the spirit, whose manners were rustic, should break a
plate. 'In a few seconds I was told that it was eaten, and looking,
found the half of it gone, with the marks showing the teeth.'
Perhaps few savages would have told such a tale to a journal which
ought to have a large circulation--among believers.
The examples of savage spiritualism which have been adduced might
probably receive many additions; those are but gleanings from a
large field carelessly harvested. The phenomena have been but
casually studied; the civilised mind is apt to see, in savage
seances, nothing but noisy buffoonery. We have shown that there is
a more serious belief involved, and we have adduced cases in which
white men were not unconscious of the barbarian spell. It also
appears that the now recognised phenomena of hypnotism are the basis
of the more serious savage magic. The production of hypnotic
trances, perhaps of hypnotic hallucinations, is a piece of knowledge
which savages possessed (as they were acquainted with quinine),
while European physicians and philosophers ignored or laughed at it.
Tobacco and quinine were more acceptable gifts from the barbarian.
His magic has now and then been examined by a competent
anthropologist, like Mr. Im Thurn, and Castren closely observed the
proceedings of the bound and bounding Shamans among the Samoyeds.
But we need the evidence both of anthropologists and of adepts in
conjuring. They might detect some of the tricks, though Mr. Kellar,
a professional conjurer and exposer of spiritualistic imposture, has
been fairly baffled (he says) by Zulus and Hindus, while educated
Americans are puzzled by the Pawnees. Mr. Kellar's plan of
displaying a few of his own tricks was excellent: the dusky
professionals were stimulated to show theirs, which, as described,
were miracles. The Pakeha Maori, already quoted, saw a Maori
Tohunga perform 'a very good miracle as times go,' but he does not
give any particulars. The late Mr. Davey, who started as a
Spiritualist catechumen, managed, by conjuring, to produce answers
to questions on a locked slate, which is as near a miracle as
anything. But Mr. Davey is dead, though we know his secret, while
it is improbable that Mr. Maskelyne will enrich his repertoire by
travelling among Zulus, Hindus, and Pawnees. As savages cease to be
savages, our opportunities of learning their mystic lore must
decrease.
To one point in this research the notice of students in folklore may
be specially directed. In the attempt to account for the diffusion
of popular tales, such as Cinderella, we are told to observe that
the countries most closely adjacent to each other have the most
closely similar variants of the story. This is true, as a rule, but
it is also true that, while Scandinavian regions have a form of
Cinderella with certain peculiarities not shared by Southern Europe,
those crop up sporadically, far away, among Kaffirs and the Indian
'aboriginal' tribe of Santhals. The same phenomenon of diffusion
occurs when we find savage mediums tied up in their trances, all
over the North, among Canadian Hareskins, among Samoyed and Eskimo,
while the practice ceases at a given point in Labrador, and gives
place to Medicine Lodges. The binding then reappears if not in
Australia, certainly in the ancient Greek ceremonial. The writer is
not acquainted with 'the bound and bounding young man' in the
intervening regions and it would be very interesting to find
connecting cases, stepping-stones, as it were, by which the rite
passed from the Levant to the frozen North.