Cumberland, but have not the advantage of muscular contact with the
person who knows where the hidden objects are concealed. The neighbours
even deny that they have hidden anything at al . 'When they persist in
their denial ... he finds al the things that they have hidden. They see
that he is a great _inyanga_ (seer) when he has found all the things they
have concealed.' No doubt he is guided, perhaps in a super-sensitive
condition, by the unconscious indications of the excited spectators.
The point is that, while the savage conjurer will doubtless use fraud
wherever he can, still the experience of low races is in favour of
employing as seers the class of people who in Europe were, till recently,
supposed to make the best hypnotic subjects. Thus, in West Africa, 'the
presiding elders, during your initiation to the secret society of your
tribe, discover this gift [of Ebumtupism, or second sight], and so select
you as "a witch doctor."'[15] Among the Karens, the 'Wees,' or prophets,
'are nervous excitable men, such as would become mediums,'[16] as mediums
are diagnosed by Mr. Tylor.
In short, not to multiply examples, there is an element of actual
observation and of _bona fides_ entangled in the trickery of savage
practice. Though the subjects may be selected partly because of the
physical phenomena of convulsions which they exhibit, and which
favourably impress their clients, they are also such subjects as
occasional y yield that evidence of supernormal faculty which is
investigated by modern psychologists, like Richet, Janet, and William
James.
The following example, by no means unique, shows the view taken by savages of their own magic, after they have become Christians. Catherine Wabose, a converted Red Indian seeress, described her preliminary fast, at the age
of puberty. After six days of abstention from food she was rapt away to an unknown place, where a radiant being welcomed her. Later a dark round
object promised her the gift of prophecy. She found her natural senses
greatly sharpened by lack of food. She first exercised her powers when her kinsfolk in large numbers were starving, a medicine-lodge, or 'tabernacle'
as Lufitau cal s it, was built for her, and she crawled in. As is wel
known, these lodges are violently shaken during the magician's stay within them, which the early Jesuits at first attributed to muscular efforts by
the seers. In 1637 Pere Lejeune was astonished by the violent motions of a large lodge, tenanted by a smal man. One sorcerer, with an appearance of
candour, vowed that 'a great wind entered boisterously,' and the Father
was assured that, if he went in himself, he would become clairvoyant. He
did not make the experiment. The Methodist convert, Catherine, gave the
same description of her own experience: 'The lodge began shaking violently by supernatural means. I knew this by the compressed current of air above, and the noise of motion.' She had been beating a smal drum and singing,
now she lay quiet. The radiant 'orbicular' spirit then informed her that
they 'must go westwards for game; how short-sighted you are!' 'The
advice was taken and crowned by instant success.' This established her
reputation.[17] Catherine's conversion was led up to by a dream of her
dying son, who beheld a Sacred Figure, and received from Him white
raiment. Her magical songs tel how unseen hands shake the magic lodge.
They invoke the Great Spirit that
'Illumines earth
Illumines heaven!
Ah, say what Spirit, or Body, is this Body,
That fills the world around,
Speak, man, ah say
What Spirit, or Body, is this Body?'
It is like a savage hymn to Hegel's _fuehlende Seele_: the al -pervading
Sensitive Soul. We are reminded, too, of 'the doctrine of the Sanscrit
Upanishads: There is no limit to the knowing of the Self that knows.'[18]
Unluckily Catherine was not asked to give other examples of what she
considered her successes.
Acosta, who has not the best possible repute as an authority, informs us
that Peruvian clairvoyants 'tell what hath passed in the furthest parts
before news can come. In the distance of two or three hundred leagues
they would tel what the Spaniards did or suffered in their civil wars.' To Du Pont, in 1606, a sorcerer 'rendered a true oracle of the coming of
Poutrincourt, saying his Devil had told him so.'[19]
We now give a modern case, from a scientific laboratory, of knowledge
apparently acquired in no normal way, by a person of the sort usual y
chosen to be a prophet, or wizard, by savages.
Professor Richet writes:[20]
'On Monday, July 2, 1888, after having passed all the day in my
laboratory, I hypnotised Leonie at 8 P.M., and while she tried to make
out a diagram concealed in an envelope I said to her quite suddenly:
"What has happened to M. Langlois?" Leonie knows M. Langlois from having seen him two or three times some time ago in my physiological
laboratory, where he acts as my assistant.--"He has burnt himself,"
Leonie replied,--"Good," I said, "and where has he burnt himself?"--"On the left hand. It is not fire: it is--I don't know its name. Why does he
not take care when he pours it out?"--"Of what colour," I asked, "is the stuff which he pours out?"--"It is not red, it is brown; he has hurt himself very much--the skin puffed up directly."
'Now, this description is admirably exact. At 4 P.M. that day M.
Langlois had wished to pour some bromine into a bottle. He had done this
clumsily, so that some of the bromine flowed on to his left hand, which
held the funnel, and at once burnt him severely. Although he at once put
his hand into water, wherever the bromine had touched it a blister was
formed in a few seconds--a blister which one could not better describe
than by saying, "the skin puffed up." I need not say that Leonie had not left my house, nor seen anyone from my laboratory. Of this I am
_absolutely certain,_ and I am certain that I had not mentioned the
incident of the burn to anyone. Moreover, this was the first time for
nearly a year that M. Langlois had handled bromine, and when Leonie saw
him six months before at the laboratory he was engaged in experiments
of quite another kind.'
Here the savage reasoner would infer that Leonie's spirit had visited M.
Langlois. The modern inquirer will probably say that Leonie became aware
of what was passing in the mind of M. Richet. This supranormal way of
acquiring knowledge was observed in the last century by M. de Puysegur in
one of his earliest cases of somnambulism. MM. Binet and Fere say: 'It is
not yet admitted that the subject is able to divine the thoughts of the
magnetiser without any material communication;' while they grant, as a
minimum, that 'research should be continued in this direction.'[21] They
appear to think that Leonie may have read 'involuntary signs' in the
aspect of M. Richet. This is a difficult hypothesis.
Here fol ows a case recorded in his diary by Mr. Dobbie, of Adelaide,
Australia, who has practised hypnotism for curative purposes. He explains
(June 10, 1884) that he had mesmerised Miss ---- on several occasions to
relieve rheumatic pain and sore throat. He found her to be clairvoyant.
'The following is a verbatim account of the second time I tested her
powers in this respect, April 12, 1884. There were four persons present
during the _seance_. One of the company wrote down the replies as they
were spoken.
'Her father was at the time over fifty miles away, but we did not know
exactly where, so I questioned her as fol ows: "Can you find your father at the present moment?" At first she replied that she could not see him, but in a minute or two she said, "Oh, yes; now I can see him, Mr.
Dobbie." "Where is he?" "Sitting at a large table in a large room, and there are a lot of people going in and out." "What is he doing?"
"Writing a letter, and there is a book in front of him." "Whom is he writing to?" "To the newspaper." Here she paused and laughingly said,
"Well, I declare, he is writing to the A B" (naming a newspaper). "You said there was a book there. Can you tell me what book it is?" "It has gilt letters on it." "Can you read them, or tell me the name of the author?" She read, or pronounced slowly, "W.L.W." (giving the ful surname of the author). She answered several minor questions _re_ the
furniture in the room, and I then said to her, "Is it any effort or
trouble to you to travel in this way?" "Yes, a little; I have to think."
'I now stood behind her, holding a half-crown in my hand, and asked her
if she could tell me what I had in my hand, to which she replied, "It is a shilling." It seemed as though she could see what was happening miles away easier than she could see what was going on in the room.
'Her father returned home nearly a week afterwards, and was perfectly
astounded when told by his wife and family what he had been doing on
that particular evening; and, although previous to that date he was a
thorough sceptic as to clairvoyance, he frankly admitted that my
clairvoyant was perfectly correct in every particular. He also informed
us that the book referred to was a new one, which he had purchased after
he had left his home, so that there was no possibility of his daughter
guessing that he had the book before him. I may add that the letter in
due course appeared in the paper; and I saw and handled the book.'
A number of cases of so-called 'clairvoyance' will be found in the
'Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.'[22] As the authors of these essays remark, even after discounting, in each case, fraud,
malobservation, and misreporting, the residue of cases can seldom justify
either the savage theory of the wandering soul (which is not here
seriously proposed) or Hegel's theory that the _fuehlende Seele_ is
unconditioned by space. For, if thought transference be a fact, the
apparent clairvoyant may only be reading the mind of a person at a
distance. The results, however, when successful, would natural y suggest
to the savage thinker the belief in the wandering soul, or corroborate it
if it had already been suggested by the common phenomena of dreaming.
To these instances of knowledge acquired otherwise than by the recognised
channels of sense we might add the Scottish tales of 'second sight.' That
phrase is merely a local term covering examples of what is called
'clairvoyance'--views of things remote in space, hal ucinations of sight
that coincide with some notable event, premonitions of things future, and
so on. The belief and hal ucinatory experiences are still very common in
the Highlands, where I have myself collected many recent instances. Mr.
Tylor observes that the examples 'prove a little too much; they vouch not
only for human apparitions, but for such phantoms as demon dogs, and for
still more fanciful symbolic omens.' This is perfectly true. I have found
no cases of demon dogs; but wandering lights, probably of meteoric or
miasmatic origin, are certainly regarded as tokens of death. This is
obviously a superstitious hypothesis, the lights being real phenomena
misconstrued. Again, funerals are not uncommonly seen where no funeral is
taking place; it is then alleged that a real funeral, similar and
similarly situated, soon afterwards occurred. On the hypothesis of
believers, the percipients somehow behold
'Such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.'
Even the savage cannot account for this experience by the wandering of the soul in space; nor do I suggest any explanation. I give, however, one or
two instances. They are published in the 'Journal of the Caledonian
Medical Society,' 1897, by Dr. Alastair Macgregor, on the authority of the MSS. of his father, a minister in the island of Skye.
'He once told me that when he first went to Skye he scoffed at the idea of such a power as second sight being genuine; but he said that, after having been there for some years as a clergyman, he had been so often consulted
_beforehand_ by people who said they had seen visions of events which
subsequently occurred, to my father's knowledge, in exact accordance with
the form and details of the vision as foretold, that he was compel ed to
confess that some folks had, apparently at least, the unfortunate faculty.
'As my father expressed it, this faculty was "neither voluntary nor
constant, and was considered rather annoying than agreeable to the
possessors of it. The gift was possessed by individuals of both sexes, and its fits came on within doors and without, sitting and standing, at night
and by day, and at whatever employment the votary might chance to be
engaged."'
Here fol ows a typical example of the vision of a funeral:
'The session clerk at Dul , a small village in Perthshire, was ill, and
my grandfather, clergyman there at the time, had to do duty for him. One
fine summer evening, about 7 o'clock, a young man and woman came to get
some papers filled up, as they were going to be married. My grandfather
was with the couple in the session clerk's room, no doubt attending to
the papers, when suddenly _all three_ saw through the window a funeral
procession passing along the road. From their dress the bulk of the
mourners seemed to be farm labourers--indeed the young woman recognised
some of them as natives of Dul , who had gone to live and work near
Dunkeld. Remarks were naturally made by my grandfather and the young
couple about the untimely hour for a funeral, and, hastily filling in
the papers, my grandfather went out to get the key of the churchyard,
which was kept in the manse, as, without the key, the procession
could not get into God's acre. Wondering how it was that he had received
no intimation of the funeral, he went to the manse by a short cut, got
the key, and hurried down to the churchyard gate, where, of course, he
expected to find the cortege waiting. _Not a soul was there_ except the
young couple, who were as amazed as my grandfather!
'Well, at the same hour in the evening of the same day in the following
week the funeral, this time in reality, arrived quite unexpectedly. The
facts were that a boy, a native of Dull, had got gored by a bul at
Dunkeld, and was so shockingly mangled that his remains were picked
up and put into a coffin and taken without delay to Dull. A grave was
dug as quickly as possible--the poor lad having no relatives--and the
remains were interred. My grandfather and the young couple recognised
several of the mourners as being among those whom they had seen out of
the session clerk's room, exactly a week previously, in the phantom
cortege. The young woman knew some of them personal y, and related to
them what she had seen, but they of course denied all knowledge of the
affair, having been then in Dunkeld.'
I give another example, because the experience was auditory, as well as
visual, and the prediction was announced before the event.
'The parishioners in Skye were evidently largely imbued with the
Romanist-like belief in the powers of intercession vested in their
clergyman; so when they had a "warning" or "vision" they usually consulted my father as to what they could do to prevent the coming disaster
befalling their relatives or friends. In this way my father had the
opportunity of noting down the minutiae of the "warning" or "vision"
directly it was told him. Having had the advantage of a medical, previous
to his theological, training, he was able to note down sound facts,
unembel ished by superadded imagination. Entering into this method of
case-taking with a mind perfectly open, except for a slight touch of
scepticism, he was greatly surprised to discover how very frequently
realisations occurred exactly in conformance with the minutiae of the
vision as detailed in his note-book. Final y, he was compelled to
discard his scepticism, and to admit that some people had undoubtedly
the uncanny gift. Almost the first case he took (Case X.) was that of a
woman who had one day a vision of her son falling over a high rock at Uig, in Skye, with a sheep or lamb.
'CASE X.--She heard her son exclaim in Gaelic, "This is a fatal lamb for me." As her son lived several miles from Uig, and was a fisherman,
realisation seemed to my father very unlikely, but one month afterwards
the realisation occurred only too true. Unknown to his mother, who had
warned him against having anything to do with sheep or lambs, the son
one day, instead of going out in his boat, thought he would take a
holiday inland, and went off to Uig, where a farmer enlisted his
services in separating some lambs from the ewes. One of the lambs ran
away, and the fisher lad ran headlong after it, and not looking where he
was going, on catching the lamb was pulled by it to the edge of one of
the very picturesque but exceedingly dangerous rocks at Uig. Too late
realizing his critical position, he exclaimed, "This is a fatal lamb for me," but going with such an impetus he was unable to bring himself up in time, and, along with the lamb, fel over into the ravine below, and
was, of course, killed on the spot. The farmer, when he saw the lad's
danger, ran to his assistance, but was only in time to hear him cry out
in Gaelic before disappearing over the brink of the precipice. This was
predicted by the mother a month before. Was this simply a coincidence?'
Dr. Macgregor's remarks on the involuntary and unwelcome nature of the
visions is borne out by what Scheffer, as already quoted, says concerning
the Lapps.
In addition to visions which thus come unsought, contributing knowledge of things remote or even future, we may glance at visions which are provoked
by various methods. Drugs (_impepo_) are used, seers whirl in a wild
dance till they fall senseless, or trance is induced by various kinds of
self-suggestion or 'auto-hypnotism.' Fasting is also practised. In modern
life the self-induced trance is common among 'mediums'--a subject to which we recur later.
So far, it will be observed, our evidence proves that precisely similar
_beliefs_ as to man's occasional power of opening the gates of distance
have been entertained in a great variety of lands and ages, and by races
in every condition of culture.[23] The al eged experiences are still
said to occur, and have been investigated by physiologists of the eminence of M. Richet. The question cannot but arise as to the residuum of fact in
these narrations, and it keeps on arising.
In the fol owing chapter we discuss a mode of inducing hal ucinations
which has for anthropologists the interest of universal diffusion. The
width of its range in savage races has not, we believe, been previously
observed. We then add facts of modern experience, about the authenticity
of which we, personal y, entertain no doubt; and the provisional
conclusion appears to be that savages have observed a psychological
circumstance which has been ignored by professed psychologists, and which, certainly, does not fit into the ordinary materialistic hypothesis.
[Footnote 1: Cal away, _Religion of the Zulus_, p. 232.]
[Footnote 2: Graham Dalzell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, p. 481.]
[Footnote 3: See good evidence in _Ker of Kersland's Memoirs_.]
[Footnote 4: Autus Gel ius, xv. 18, Dio Cassius, lxvii., Crespet, _De la
Haine du Diable, Proces de Jeanne d'Arc_.]
[Footnote 5: See 'Shamanism in Siberia,' _J.A.I._, November 1894,
pp. 147-149, and compare Scheffer. The article is very learned and
interesting.]
[Footnote 6: Williams mentions second sight in Fiji, but gives no
examples.]
[Footnote 7: _Primitive Culture,_ i. 447. Mr. Tylor cites Dr. Brinton's
_Myths of the New World,_ p. 269. The reference in the recent edition is
p. 289. Carver's case is given under the head 'Possession' later.]
[Footnote 8: _Journal Historique_ p. 362; _Atlantic Monthly_, July 1866.]
[Footnote 9: Probably _impepo_, eaten by seers, according to Callaway.]
[Footnote 10: Cal away's _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 358.]
[Footnote 11: Oxford, 1674.]
[Footnote 12: _Voyages_.]
[Footnote 13: From Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 362.]
[Footnote 14: Bastian, _Ueber psych. Beobacht_. p.21.]
[Footnote 14: Op. cit. p.26.]
[Footnote 15: Miss Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 460.]
[Footnote 16: _Primitive Culture_, ii, 181; Mason's _Burmah_, p. 107.]
[Footnote 17: Schoolcraft, i. 394.]
[Footnote 18: Brinton's _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 57.]
[Footnote 19: Purchas, p. 629.]
[Footnote 20: S.P.R. _Proceedings_, vol. vi. 69.]
[Footnote 21: Binet and Fere, _Animal Magnetism_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 22: Vol. vii. Mrs. Sidgwick, pp. 30, 356; vol. vi. p. 66,
Professor Richet, p. 407, Drs. Dufay and Azam.]
[Footnote 23: The examples in the Old Testament, and in the _Life of St.
Columba_ by Adamnan, need only be al uded to as too familiar for
quotation.]
V
CRYSTAL VISIONS, SAVAGE AND CIVILISED
Among savage methods of provoking hal ucinations whence knowledge may be
supernormally obtained, various forms of 'crystal-gazing' are the most
curious. We find the habit of looking into water, usual y in a vessel,
preferably a glass vessel, among Red Indians (Lejeune), Romans (Varro,
cited in _Civitas Dei_, iii. 457), Africans of Fez (Leo Africanus); while
Maoris use a drop of blood (Taylor), Egyptians use ink (Lane), and
Australian savages employ a bal of polished stone, into which the seer
'puts himself' to descry the results of an expedition.[1]
I have already given, in the Introduction, Ellis's record of the
Polynesian case. A hole being dug in the door of his house, and filled
with water, the priest looks for a vision of the thief who has carried off stolen goods. The Polynesian theory is that the god carries the spirit of
the thief over the water, in which it is reflected. Lejeune's Red Indians
make their patients gaze into the water, in which they will see the
pictures of the things in the way of food or medicine that will do them
good. In modern language, the instinctive knowledge existing implicitly
in the patient's subconsciousness is thus brought into the range of his
ordinary consciousness.
In 1887 the late Captain J. T. Bourke, of the U.S. Cavalry, an original
and careful observer, visited the Apaches in the interests of the
Ethnological Bureau. He learned that one of the chief duties of the
medicine-men was to find out the whereabouts of lost or stolen property.
Na-a-cha, one of these _jossakeeds_, possessed a magic quartz crystal,
which he greatly valued. Captain Bourke presented him with a still finer
crystal. 'He could not give me an explanation of its magical use, except
that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see,'
Captain Bourke appears never to have heard of the modern experiments in
crystal-gazing. Captain Bourke also discovered that the Apaches, like the
Greeks, Australians, Africans, Maoris, and many other, races, use the
bul -roarer, turndun, or _rhombos_--a piece of wood which, being whirled
round, causes a strange windy roar--in their mystic ceremonies. The wide
use of the rhombos was known to Captain Bourke; that of the crystal was
not.
For the Iroquois, Mrs. Erminie Smith supplies information about the
crystal. 'Placed in a gourd of water, it could render visible the
apparition of a person who has bewitched another.' She gives a case in
European times of a medicine-man who found the witch's habitat, but
got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was
successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che
'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black
stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3]
The kindness of Monsieur Lefebure enables me to give another example from
Madagascar.[4] Flacourt, describing the Malagasies, says that they
_squillent_ (a word not in Littre), that is, divine by crystals, which
'fal from heaven when it thunders,' Of course the rain reveals the
crystals, as it does the flint instruments called 'thunderbolts' in many
countries. 'Lorsqu'ils squillent, ils ont une de ces pierres au coing de
leurs tablettes, disans qu'elle a la vertu de faire faire operation a leur figure de geomance.' Probably they used the crystals as do the Apaches. On July 15 a Malagasy woman viewed, whether in her crystal or otherwise, two
French vessels which, like the Spanish fleet, were 'not in sight,' also
officers, and doctors, and others aboard, whom she had seen, before their
return to France, in Madagascar. The earliest of the ships did not arrive
till August 11.
Dr. Callaway gives the Zulu practice, where the chief 'sees what will
happen by looking into the vessel.'[5] The Shamans of Siberia and Eastern
Russia employ the same method.[6] The case of the Inca, Yupanqui, is very
curious. 'As he came up to a fountain he saw a piece of crystal fall into
it, within which he beheld a figure of an Indian in the fol owing
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