Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
The curious coincidences between savage and civilised “spiritualism”
have still to be explained. Mr. Tylor says that “the ethnographic view”
finds “modern spiritualism to be in great measure a direct revival
from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folk-lore.” But in a
really comparative study of the topic, this theory would need to be
proved by historical facts. Let us grant that Eskimo and Australian
spiritualism are a savage imposture. Let us grant that peasants, little
advanced from the savage intellectual condition, retained a good deal
of savage spiritualism. To complete the proof it would be necessary
to adduce many examples of peasant _séances_, to show that these were
nearly identical with savage _séances_, and then to demonstrate that
the introducers of the civilised modern _séance_ had been in touch with
the savage or peasant performances. For the better explanation of the
facts, the Psychical Society might send missionaries to investigate
and test the exhibitions of Australian Birraarks, and Maori Tohungas,
and Eskimo Angekoks. Mr. Im Thurm, in Guiana, has made experiments
in Peayism, or local magic, but felt no more than a drowsy mesmeric
sensation, and a headache, after the treatment. While those things are
neglected, psychical research is remiss in attention to her elevating
task.
In the third class of ghosts we propose to place those which are
independent of the invocations of the sorcerer, which come and go, or
stay, at their own will. As to “haunted houses,” savages, who have
no houses, are naturally not much troubled by them. It is easy to
leave one _gungeh_ or bark shelter for another; and this is generally
done after a death among the Australians. Races with more permanent
habitations have other ways of exorcising the haunters—by feeding the
ghosts, for example, at their graves, so that they are comfortable
there, and do not wish to emerge. Two curious instances of haunted
forests may be given here. To one I have already referred in a little
volume, _Custom and Myth_, recently published. Mrs. Edwards, in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_, printed a paper called “The Mystery of the
Pezazi.” To be brief, the mystery lay in the constant disturbing sounds
of nocturnal tree-felling near a bungalow in Ceylon, where examination
proved that no trees had been felled. Mrs. Edwards, her husband, and
their servants were on several occasions disturbed by these sounds,
which were unmistakable and distinct. The Cingalese attribute the
noises to a Pezazi or spirit. I find a description of precisely the
same disturbances in Sahagun’s account of the superstitions of the
Aztecs. Brother Sahagun was one of the earliest Spanish missionaries in
Mexico, and his account of Aztec notions is most intelligently written.
In Mexico, too, “the Midnight Axe” is supposed to be a phenomenon
produced by woodland spectres. A critic in the _Athenæum_ suggested
that the fact of the noise, attested by English witnesses in Ceylon who
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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