The Problems of Psychical Research, Hereward Carrington [book club suggestions txt] 📗
- Author: Hereward Carrington
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"The Pythoness (speaking of the Witch of Endor) being ventriloqua, that is, speaking as it were from the bottom of her belly, did cast herself into a trance, and so abused Saul in Samuel's name in her counterfeit hollow voice."
Indeed, something was necessary to check the rank credulity of the times. If an old woman scolded a carter, and later on in the day his cart got stuck in the mud or overturned, it was positive evidence that he and his cart and horse had been "bewitched"! If an old woman kept a black cat or a pet toad, it was most assuredly her "familiar," and she was branded as a witch forthwith. If cows sickened and died, it was because a "spell" had been cast over them; and so on and so on. The superstitions of witchcraft were as innumerable as they were extraordinary. Are there any facts, amid all this superstition and ignorance, tending to show that genuine supernormal phenomena ever occurred at all? And if so, what are they?
It must be remembered that, in the days of witchcraft, virtually nothing was known of hysteria, epilepsy, the varied forms of insanity, hallucination, hypnotism, or of the possibilities of mal-observation and lapse of memory: while such a matter as first-hand circumstantial evidence seems to have been lost to sight entirely. If any mental or extraordinary physical disturbance took place, if the witch went into a trance and described things that were not, this was held to be proof positive that she was bewitched and under the influence of the devil. But we now know that most of these facts really indicated disease—mental and bodily—or the results of hysteria or trance, spontaneous or induced. Possibly there were also traces of hypnotism and telepathic influence, upon occasion. Of course, fraud pure and simple would account for many of the phenomena—the vomiting of pins and needles, for instance. But there remain certain facts which cannot be accounted for on any of these theories. Let us see, briefly, what these are.
First there are the "witches' marks." These were anaesthetic patches or zones on the body that were quite insensible to pain. They were searched for with the aid of sharp needles, and often found! It was thought that these were the spots which the devil had touched; this was his "trade-mark," so to speak, by which all witches were known. Now we know that just such anaesthetic patches occur in hysterical patients, and are not due to supernatural causes at all, but to pathological states.
Then, again, there is the possible occurrence of hallucinations. Edmund Gurney pointed this out in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 117, where he said:
"We know now that subjective hallucinations may possess the very fullest sensory character, and may be as real to the percipient as any object he ever beheld. I have myself heard an epileptic subject, who was perfectly sane and rational in his general conduct, describe a series of interviews that he had had with the devil with a precision and an absolute belief in the evidence of his senses equal to anything that I ever read in the records of the witches' compacts. And further, we know now that there is a condition, capable often of being induced in uneducated and simple persons with extreme ease, in which any idea that is suggested may at once take sensory form, and may be projected as an actual hallucination. To those who have seen robust young men, in an early stage of hypnotic trance, staring with horror at a figure which appears to them to be walking on the ceiling, or giving way to strange convulsions under the impression that they have been changed into birds or snakes, there will be nothing very surprising in the belief of hysterical girls that they were possessed by some alien influence, or that their distinct persecutor was actually present to their senses. It is true that in hypnotic experiments there is commonly some preliminary process by which the peculiar condition is induced, and that the idea which originates the delusion has then to be suggested ab extra. But with sensitive 'subjects' who have been much under any particular influence, a mere word will produce the effect; nor is there any feature in the evidence for witchcraft that more constantly recurs than the touching of the victim by the witch. Moreover, no hard and fast lines exist between the delusions of induced hypnotism and those of spontaneous trance, or of the grave hystero-epileptic crises which mere terror is now known to develop."
Unquestionably, hypnotism and hallucination played their part; also perhaps telepathy; and, as Gurney points out elsewhere, "The imagination which may be unable to produce, even in feeble-minded persons, the belief that they see things that are not there, may be quite able to produce the belief that they have seen them, which is all, of course, that their testimony implies" (p. 118).
Doubtless a large part of witchcraft, particularly that portion of it which relates to the Sabbath and the scenes said to be enacted there, can be explained as being due to the morbid workings of the mind while in a trance state. It is asserted on good authority that salves and ointments were rubbed into the pores of the skin all over the body; and that soon after this the witch would feel drowsy and lie down, and frequently remain in a semitrance state for several hours. During that time she would visit the Sabbath,—so it was said; but her body remained on the bed meanwhile, clearly showing that it had not been there.[48]
One of the most curious beliefs prevalent at the time was the belief in lycanthropy, that is, that certain individuals can, under certain conditions, change their bodily shape, and appear as animals to persons at a distance! Frequently this animal would be injured, in which case the person whom the animal represented would be found to be injured in the same way, and in exactly the same place. The witch in such cases would frequently be lying at home in bed in a trance state, while her "fluidic double," in the shape of the animal, would be roaming about "seeking whom he might devour." The following is a typical case, which I quote from Adolphe D'Assier's Posthumous Humanity, p. 261:
"A miller, named Bigot, had some reputation for sorcery. One day, when his wife rose very early to go and wash some linen not very far from the house, he tried to dissuade her, repeating to her several times, 'Do not go there; you will be frightened.' 'Why should I be frightened?' answered she. 'I tell you you will be frightened.' She made nothing of these threats, and departed. Hardly had she taken her place at the wash-tub before she saw an animal moving here and there about her. As it was not yet daylight she could not clearly make out its form, but she thought it was a kind of dog. Annoyed by these goings and comings, and not being able to scare it away, she threw at it her wooden clothes-beater, which struck it in the eye. The animal immediately disappeared. At the same moment the children of Bigot heard the latter utter a cry of pain from the bed, and add: 'Ah! the wretch! she has destroyed my eye.' From that day, in fact, he became one-eyed. Several persons told me this fact, and I have heard it from Bigot's children themselves."
How does our author attempt to account for such a fact as this? He says:
"It was certainly the double of the miller which projected itself while he was in bed and wandered about under an animal form. The wound which the animal received at once repercussed upon the eye of Bigot, just as we have seen the same thing happen in analogous cases of the projection of the double by sorcerers."
Without endorsing such a view of the case, it may be said that recent experiments have shown it to be less incredible than might at first appear. Thus: We read further:
"Innumerable facts, observed from antiquity to our own day, demonstrate in our being the existence of an internal reality—the internal man. Analysis of these different manifestations has permitted us to penetrate its nature. Externally it is the exact image of the person of whom it is the complement. Internally it reproduces the mould of all the organs which constitute the framework of the human body. We see it, in short, move, speak, take nourishment; perform, in a word, all the great functions of animal life. The extreme tenuity of these constituent molecules, which represent the last term of inorganic matter, allows it to pass through the walls and partitions of apartments. Hence the name of phantom, by which it is generally designated. Nevertheless, as it is united with the body from which it emanates by an invisible vascular plexus, it can, at will, draw to itself, by a sort of aspiration, the greater part of the living forces which animate the latter. One sees, then, by a singular inversion, life withdrawn from the body, which then exhibits a cadaverous rigidity, and transfers itself entirely to the phantom, which acquires consistency—sometimes even to the point of struggling with persons before whom it materializes. It is but exceptionally that it shows itself in connection with a living person. But as soon as death has snapped the bonds which attach it to our organism, it definitely separates itself from the human body and constitutes the posthumous phantom."
This interpretation of the facts, it will be seen, forms a sort of connecting link between apparitions, ghosts, materializations, vampirism, and witchcraft; it is also in accord with the statements of the theosophists as to the astral body, conforms with certain statements made through Mrs. Piper and others as to the fluidic or ethereal body, and accounts for many of the phenomena of "collective hallucination" and haunted houses. I am far from saying that I think such a theory proved, but it is at least consistent and plausible; it is also in accord with many facts, and explains them as no other theory can or does.
Colonel A. de Rochas, in his article on "Regression of Memory" (Annals of Psychical Science, July 1905), claimed that he had experimentally produced one of these doubles in a mesmerised subject. After several séances, and while the subject was in a deep trance, the following occurred:
"The astral body is now complete. M. de R. tries to make it rise, to send it into another room. The body is stopped in its journey by the ceiling and the walls. M. de R. tells Mayo to stretch towards him the astral right hand, and he pinches it; Mayo feels the pinch."
Experiments such as these could be multiplied ad infinitum. There are cases on record in which the astral form has been pricked with needles, while the "sensitive" felt the prick, and so on. These experiments are suggestive, and if they should prove an etheric body, or anything corresponding to it, that would be at least one great step in advance in psychic research. It would also enable us to understand many of the phenomena of witchcraft, which are at present looked upon as mere superstitions.
A word, finally, as to the phenomena of "exteriorization of sensibility," to which reference was made in the last paragraph. Many French observers have, apparently, obtained these phenomena; but there seems to be much scepticism regarding them in England and America, where they are generally considered to be due entirely to "suggestion." For
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