The International Monthly Magazine Volume V to No II

V >> Various >> The International Monthly Magazine Volume V to No II

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

"What is the meaning of this?" asked he.

The man replied, that he did not know what to make of it, adding, "When
the gallery was last opened, there was certainly no hanging over the oak
panelling."

The king walked on to the door of the hall.

"Go no further, for heaven's sake," exclaimed the man; "surely there is
sorcery going on inside. At this hour, since the queen's death, they say
she walks up and down here. May God protect us!"

"Stop, sire," cried the count and Baumgarten together, "don't you hear
that noise? Who knows to what dangers you are exposing yourself! At all
events, allow me to summon the guards."

"I will go in," said the king, firmly; "open the door at once."

The man's hand trembled so that he could not turn the key.

"A fine thing to see an old soldier frightened," said the king, shrugging
his shoulders; "come, Count, will you open the door?"

"Sire," replied Brahe, "let your majesty command me to march to the mouth
of a Danish or German cannon, and I will obey unhesitatingly, but I cannot
defy hell itself."

"Well," said the king, in a tone of contempt, "I can do it myself."

He took the key, opened the massive oak door, and entered the hall,
pronouncing the words, "With the help of God." His three attendants, whose
curiosity overcame their fears, or who, perhaps, were ashamed to desert
their sovereign, followed him. The hall was lighted by an innumerable
number of torches. A black hanging had replaced the old tapestry. The
benches round the hall were occupied by a multitude, all dressed in black;
their faces were so dazzlingly bright that the four spectators of this
scene were unable to distinguish one amongst them. On an elevated throne,
from which the king was accustomed to address the assembly, sat a bloody
corpse, as if wounded in several parts, and covered with the ensigns of
royalty; on his right stood a child, a crown on his head, and a sceptre in
his hand; at his left an old man leant on the throne; he was dressed in
the mantle formerly worn by the administrators of Sweden, before it became
a kingdom under Gustavus Vasa. Before the throne were seated several
grave, austere looking personages, in long black robes. Between the throne
and the benches of the assembly was a block covered with black crape; an
axe lay beside it. No one in the vast assembly appeared conscious of the
presence of Charles and his companions. On their entrance they heard
nothing but a confused murmur, in which they could distinguish no words.
Then the most venerable of the judges in the black robes, he who seemed to
be their president, rose, and struck his hand five times on a folio volume
which lay open before him. Immediately there was a profound silence, and
some young men, richly dressed, their hands tied behind their backs,
entered the hall by a door opposite to that which Charles had opened. He
who walked first, and who appeared the most important of the prisoners,
stopped in the middle of the hall, before the block, which he looked at
with supreme contempt. At the same time the corpse on the throne trembled
convulsively, and a crimson stream flowed from his wounds. The young man
knelt down, laid his head on the block, the axe glittered in the air for a
moment, descended on the block, the head railed over the marble pavement,
and reached the feet of the king, and stained his slipper with blood.
Until this moment surprise had kept Charles silent, but this horrible
spectacle roused him, and advancing two or three steps towards the throne,
he boldly addressed the figure on its left in the well-known formulary,
"If thou art of God, speak; if of the other, leave us in peace."

The phantom answered slowly and solemnly, "King Charles, this blood will
not flow in thy time, but five reigns after." Here the voice became less
distinct, "Woe, woe, woe to the blood of Vasa!" The forms of all the
assembly now became less clear, and seemed but colored shades: soon they
entirely disappeared; the lights were extinguished; still they heard a
melodious noise, which one of the witnesses compared to the murmuring of
the wind among the trees, another to the sound a harp string gives in
breaking. All agreed as to the duration of the apparition, which they said
lasted ten minutes. The hangings, the head, the waves of blood, all had
disappeared with the phantoms, but Charles's slipper still retained a
crimson stain, which alone would have served to remind him of the scenes
of this night, if indeed they had not been too well engraven on his
memory.

When the king returned to his apartment, he wrote an account of what he
had seen, and he and his companions signed it. In spite of all the
precautions taken to keep these circumstances private, they were well
known, even during the lifetime of Charles, and no one hitherto has
thought fit to raise doubts as to their authenticity.

DIVINATION, WITCHCRAFT, AND MESMERISM.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

It seems strange that so obvious a case as that of Barlaam and the monks
of Mount Athos has not been brought into the mesmerical collection of
_pieces justificatives_. The first compiler of the authorities on which it
rests is Ughelli. The story is told in modern language by Mosheim, by
Fleury, and by Gibbon at the years 1341-51. In taking the version of it by
the last (Decline and Fall, c. 63,) we shall run least risk of being
imposed on by over-credulity.

"The Fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church," says the
complacent philosopher of Lausanne, "were alike persuaded that in total
abstraction of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the
enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the
monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an
abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. 'When thou art alone in thy
cell,' says the ascetic teacher, 'shut thy door and seat thyself in a
corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy
beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts towards the
middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search the place of the
heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless;
but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no
sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved
in a mystic and etherial light.' This light, the production of a
distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain,
was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God
himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the simple
solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a
_material_ substance, or how an _immaterial_ substance could be perceived
by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus these
monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally
skilled in philosophy and theology. The indiscretion of an ascetic
revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and
Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists who placed
the soul in the naval; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and
blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble
the simple devotion of their brethren; and Gregory Palamas introduced a
scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God."

Gregory illustrated his argument by a reference to the celestial light
manifested in the transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Thabor. On this
distinction issue was taken by the disputatious Calabrian, and the result
was the convocation of a synod at Constantinople, whose decree
"established as an article of faith the uncreated light of Mount Thabor;
and, after so many insults, the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by
the addition of a single absurdity."

Of the truth of facts so long and openly discussed, there can be no
question. The monks of Mount Athos did indeed put themselves into a state
which may with safety be called one of mental lucidity, by fixing their
eyes intently on a point. Mr. Robertson, who used to induce the mesmeric
sleep by causing his votaries to fix their eyes on a wafer, had better
precedent than he supposed for his practice; and Miss Martineau, who, in
her artificial trances, saw all objects illuminated has been unconsciously
repeating a monastic method of worship. The contemptuous indifference of
Gibbon for once arises from defect of information; and when in a note he
observes that Mosheim "unfolds the causes with the judgment of a
philosopher," while Fleury "transcribes and translates with the prejudices
of a Catholic priest," himself gives a luculent example of the errors of
philosophy, and of the often unsuspected approach of prejudice to truth.
Mosheim's observation, notwithstanding the damaging approval of Gibbon, is
not without its value. "There is no reason," he says, "for any to be
surprised at this account, or to question its correctness. For among the
precepts and rules of all those in the East who teach men how to withdraw
the mind from the body, and to unite it with God, or inculcate what the
Latins call a contemplative and mystic life, whether they are Christians,
or Mohammedans, or Pagans, there is this precept, viz., _that the eyes
must be fixed every day for some hours upon some particular object_, and
that whoever does this will be rapt into a kind of ecstasy. See what
Engelbert Kempfer states concerning the monks and mystics of Japan; and
the account of those of India by Francis Bernier." Strange that Mosheim,
observing the uniformity both of the process and of its results in so many
different parts of the world, should not have suspected that there was
something more in this species of lucidity than the merely casual effects
of a distempered imagination. By fixing the gaze even of the lower animals
on an immovable point, they fall into a condition equally unnatural, and
which, if they had language to express their visions, would probably be
found equally clairvoyant.

A favorite subject of mediaeval art is the life of the Christian ascetic in
the Desert. In these representations a human skull may generally be seen
placed before the eyes of the devotee. Such an object would fix the gaze
and induce the ecstasy as well as any other. The charm of this species of
contemplation must have been intense, since in search of its exaltations
and illuminations the very convents were deserted; and during the fourth
and fifth centuries the deserts of Idumea, of Egypt, and of Pontus,
swarmed with anchorites, who seemed to live only for the sake of escaping
from life, and in their fasts and mortifications rivalled, if they did not
for a time even surpass, the Fakirs of the East. To such an extent was
this religious enthusiasm carried, that in Egypt the number of the monks
was thought to equal that of the rest of the male population. Strange
consideration, if it be the fact, that a few passes of a mesmeric operator
should produce the same effects which these multitudes procured through
toils so painful and sacrifices to themselves and to society so costly.

The Egyptian method of inducing clairvoyance in boys, by causing them to
gaze on a pool of ink in the palm of the hand, has already been identified
with the practice of Dr. Dee, whose blank spherical mirror is now said to
be in the possession and use of a distinguished modern mesmeriser.
Divination by the crystal is a well-known mediaeval practice; and from the
accounts of it which Delrio and others have handed down it appears to have
resembled, in some remarkable particulars, the method now in use among the
soothsayers of Cairo. It does not appear to make any difference whether
the polished object be black or white, a mirror, a solid ball, or a
transparent globe containing water: the same extraordinary series of
appearances is alleged to follow an earnest inspection of it. Before
proceeding to Delrio's singular corroboration of this use of the crystal,
it will be well to state what is known of divination by the phial and by
the mirror. Divination by the phial is technically known as
_gasteromancy_. "In this kind of divination," says Peucer, "the response
is given by pictures, not by sounds. They procured glass vessels of a
globular shape, filled with fair water, and set round them lighted tapers;
and after invoking the demon with a muttered incantation, and proposing
the question, they brought forward a pure boy-child, or a pregnant woman,
who, gazing intently on the glass, and searching it with their eyes,
called for, and demanded, a solution of the question proposed. The devil
then answered these inquiries by certain images, which, by a kind of
refraction, shone from the water on the polished and mirror-like surface
of the phial."

_Catoptromancy_, or divination by the mirror, is as old as the time of the
Roman Emperors. In one of the passages relating to this method of inducing
what is called clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early
acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage
is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased
the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Praetorian guards. "Julian
was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he
hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the
violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not
agreeable to the course of Roman sacrifice; and they performed certain
profane incantations; and those things, too, which are done at the mirror,
in which boys with their eyes blindfolded are said, by means of
incantations, to see objects with the top of the head, Julian had recourse
to. And the boy is said to have seen (in the mirror) both the approach of
Severus and the death of Julian."

The passage may be variously rendered, according to different readings and
punctuations, either as "boys, who can see with their eyes blindfolded, by
reason of incantations made over the top of the head;" or, "boys, who,
having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, by reason
of incantations;" or, "boys, who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see
with the top of the head, it being operated on by way of incantation."
This seeing, or seeming to see, with the top of the head, is one alleged
variety of the modes of modern clairvoyance. It seems difficult to imagine
that the boy Horner, whose case is related by Mr. Topham, in a letter to
Dr. Elliotson, dated May 31, 1847, could have heard any thing of these
pagan practices. Mr. Topham, a barrister and man of credit, states: "After
five or six weeks' mesmerism, he began spontaneously to exhibit instances
of clairvoyance. The first occasion was on the 11th of September. It was
in the dusk of the evening, so that the room where he was mesmerised was
nearly dark. My previous mode of mesmerising him had been by pointing at
his eyes, but on this occasion I began by making passes over the top of
his head, and continued them after he was in the sleep. In the course of
five or six minutes after the sleep was induced, he suddenly exclaimed
that he could see into the room above us (the drawing-room). I said, 'Your
eyes are closed; how can you see?' And he replied, 'I don't see with my
eyes; I see from the top of my head. All the top of my head seems open.'
He then described, &c. I found every thing as he had described, &c." Mr.
Topham, it need scarcely be added, does not appear to have been at all
aware of the passage in Spartian, which, indeed, has not been cited or
referred to in any published work for nearly two hundred years back.

A like use of the suspended ring, indicating the early acquaintance of
practitioners in these arts with one of the alleged evidences of the
so-called _odylic_ force, is thus described by Peucer among various modes
of hydromancy: "A bowl was filled with water, and a ring suspended from
the finger was librated in the water; and so, according as the question
was propounded, a declaration or confirmation of its truth, or otherwise,
was obtained. If what was proposed was true, the ring, of its own accord,
without any impulse, struck the sides of the goblet a certain number of
times. They say that Numa Pompilius used to practise this method, and that
he evoked the gods, and consulted them in water, in this way."

_Crystallomancy_ is the art of divining by figures, which appear on the
surface of a crystal ball, in like manner as on the phial filled with
water. Concerning this practice, Delrio has the following remarkable
passage, citing his contemporary, Spengler: "A man well versed in the
Greek and Latin fathers, and happy, if he had not presumed, with unclean
hands, to dabble in the mysteries of our faith (Spenger), has published in
Germany a learned commentary on the nature of demons, which he has
prefixed to Plutarch's Essay, _De Defectu Oraculorum_. From this (says
Delrio) I extract, in his own words, the following narrative. There are
some (he says) who, being consulted on matters unknown, distinctly see
every thing that is inquired after in _crystals_; and a little further on
proceeds to state, that he once had an acquaintance, a man of one of the
best families of Nuremberg, and that this acquaintance of his came to him
on one occasion, bringing with him a crystal gem, of a round form, wrapped
up in a piece of silk, which he told him he had received from a stranger,
who encountering him several years before in the market-place, had asked
his hospitality, and whom he had brought home with him and lodged for the
space of three days; and that when the stranger was departing, he had left
him the crystal as a present, in token of his obligation, and had taught
him the use of it; thus, that if there was any thing he particularly
wished to be informed of, he should take out this crystal and desire a
pure male child to look into it and say what he should see there; and that
it would come to pass that whatever he desired to be informed of, would be
indicated by appearances seen by the boy. And he affirmed that he never
was deceived in any instance, and that he learned matters of a wonderful
kind from the representations of those boys, although no one else, by the
closest inspection, could see any thing except the clear and shining gem.
At a certain time, however, when his wife was pregnant of a male child,
appearances were visible to her also in the crystal. First of all, there
used to appear the form of a man clad in the ordinary habit of the times,
and then would open the representation of whatever was inquired after; and
when all was explained, the same figure of the man would depart and
disappear; but in his departure would often appear to perambulate the town
and enter the churches. But the report of these appearances having spread
in all directions, they began to be threatened by the populace. It also
appeared, that certain men of learning had read in the crystal some
statements respecting doubts entertained by them in their studies; and
moved by these and other reasons, Spengler stated that the owner of the
crystal came to him, representing that he thought the time was come when
he ought to cease making such a use of it; for that he was now persuaded
he had sinned in no light degree in doing so, and had for a long time
suffered grievous pangs of a disturbed conscience on that account, and had
come to the determination of having nothing further to do with experiments
of that kind, and had accordingly brought the crystal to him to do with it
whatever he pleased. Then Spengler, highly approving his resolution,
states that he took the crystal, and having pounded it into minute
fragments, threw them, together with the silk wrapper, into a draw-well."
So far Delrio.

Another variety of this process is found in the _Onuchomanteia_, or
nail-divinition, also spoken of by Delrio. "In this species," says he,
"male children, before they have lost their purity, smear their nails with
oil and lamp-black, and then, holding up the nail against the sun,
repeating some charm, see in it what they desire. This mischief," he goes
on to say, "has gone even farther in our own time. I myself knew one
Quevedo, a veteran Spanish soldier, but more distinguished in war and arms
than in piety, who, being in Brussels at the time when the Duke of Medina
Caeli set sail from Gallicia for Belgium, clearly showed in more than one
of his nails the fleet leaving the port of Corunna, and soon after
dreadfully tossed by a tempest. Thus this man, who could also cure the
wounds of others by his words alone, rendered his own spiritual state
incurable by any one."

The like use of the crystal ball and spherical phial, containing water,
suggests a version of the epigrams of Claudian--"De crystallo in quo aqua
inclusa"--which has not been afforded by any of the commentators. Globules
of water are sometimes found inclosed in crystals, as well as in amber. On
one of those singular gems Claudian has composed a series of epigrams,
which ascribe properties to the stone, and make allusion to uses of it
hardly reconcileable with the idea of its being a merely puerile
curiosity. The earlier epigrams of the series are neat and playful, but
insignificant:--

"The icy gem its aqueous birth attests,
Part turned to stone, while part in fluid rests;
Winter's numbed hand achieved the cunning feat,
The perfecter for being incomplete.

"Nymphs who your sister nymphs in glassy thrall
Hold here imprisoned in the crystal ball;
Waters that were and are, declare the cause
That your bright forms at once congeals and thaws.

"Scorn not the crystal ball, a worth it owns,
Greater than graven Erythrean stones;
Rude though it seems, a formless mass of ice,
'Tis justly counted 'mongst our gems of price."

And so on through several others, until he comes to that one which seems
to indicate something beyond a merely figurative use of the word "nymphs;"
though, after all, it is possible that the word was originally written
with an _l_, instead of _n_, which would make all the difference between
"nymphs" and "waters":--

"While the soft boy the slippery crystal turns,
To touch the waters in their icy urns,
Safe in its depths translucent he beholds
The nymphs, unconscious of the winter colds:
And the dry ball exploring with his lip,
Seems, while he fails, the illusive lymph to sip."

The Latin is subjoined:--

"Dum crystalla puer contingere lubrica gaudet
Et gelidum tenero pollice versat onus,
Videt perspicuo deprensas in marmore nymphas,
Dura quibus solis parcere novit hyems:
Et siccum religens labiis sitientibus orbem,
Irrita quaesitis oscula figit aquis."

Not the least remarkable of the qualities here ascribed to the crystal
ball is its energy in imparting the sensation of cold. Dom Chifflet, who,
in 1665, published his learned treatise at Antwerp on the objects then
recently discovered in the supposed tomb of King Childeric, at Tournay,
says of the crystal ball which was found amongst them, "You would say it
was petrified ice; so cold it was, that my palm and fingers, after
handling it, were quite torpid." And cites Anslem Boetius, in his book on
stones and gems, as saying, "the crystal is of so cold and dry a nature,
that placed beneath the tongue of a feverish person, it allays the thirst;
and held in the hands even of those violently fevered, it refreshes and
cools them, especially if it be of considerable size, and of a spherical
figure;" and another writer on the same subject, Andreas Cisalpinus, who
states of the marble called ophite, that "they make of it little globes,
for the handling of such as are in burning fever, the coldness of the
stone expelling the disease." So far Dom Chifflet. It seems almost as if
we were reading Reichenbach. "He (Reichenbach) found that crystals are
capable of producing all the phenomena resulting from the action of a
magnet on cataleptic patients. Thus, for instance, a large piece of rock
crystal, placed in the hand of a nervous patient, affects the fingers so
as to make them grasp the crystal involuntarily, and shut the fist.
Reichenbach found that more than half of all the persons he tried were
sensible of its action." Chifflet probably was a man of a nervous
temperament. Those who desire to see the crystal ball in question, may
inspect it, where it is still preserved, with other objects found in the
tomb, at the Gallerie de Medailles, in Paris. Two similar balls may be
seen here in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.

The use of water in communicating an ecstacy similar to the mesmeric
lucidity, is largely dwelt on by the mystical writers known as the
Neo-Platonists. Psellus describes a mode of divinition among the Assyrians
by a basin, which smacks strongly of the mesmeric practice. "The water,
which is poured into the basin, seems, as to its substance, to differ in
nothing from other water; but it possesses a certain virtue, infused into
it by incantations, whereby it is rendered more apt for the reception of
the demon." The effect of the waters of some sacred places on those
accustomed to their influence, was also such as is claimed for the
mesmerized waters of our present practitioners. Jamblichus gives this
account of the Colophonian oracle:--"There was a subterranean place at
Colophon, near Ephesus, in which was a fountain. The priest on stated
nights sacrificed, then drank the water, and afterwards prophesied, being
rendered invisible to the spectators. It might seem," he says, "to some
that the Divine Spirit passed into the priest through the water. But this
is not so; for the divine influence is not transmitted thus according to
the laws of distance and division, through these things which participate
in it, but comprehends them from without, and inwardly illuminates and
fills them with lucidity, and fills the water also with a certain virtue
conducive to the prophetic faculty, that is, a clarifying virtue; so that
when the priest drinks, it purifies the luminous spirit which is implanted
in him, and accommodates it to God, and by that purifying and
accommodating process, enables him to apprehend the deity. But there is
another kind of presence of the god, besides the virtue infused into the
wafer, which illumines all around, above, and within us, and which no man
wants, if he can only attain to the necessary state of congruity. And so
of a sudden it falls on the prophet, and makes use of him as an
instrument; and he in the meantime has no command of himself, and knows
not what he says, nor where he is, and with difficulty comes to himself
again, after the response given. Moreover, before drinking the water, he
abstains for a day and night from food, and partakes of certain mysteries
inaccessible to the vulgar; from which it is to be collected that there
are two methods by which man may be prepared for the reception of the
divine influence: one by the drinking of purgatorial water, endowed by the
Deity with a clarifying virtue; the other, by sobriety, solitude, the
separation of the mind from the body, and the intent contemplation of the
Deity."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32