Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of MesmerismMayo, Herbert
History
Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein: With an Account of Mesmerism
Mayo, Herbert
Mesmerism; Parapsychology and medicine; Superstition
to read mottoes contained in nutshells purchased by other parties for
the experiments. The longest motto thus read contained ninety-eight
words.” “A lady, one of Major Buckley’s waking clairvoyantes, read
one hundred and three mottoes contained in nuts in one day, without a
pass being made on that occasion. In this and in many other cases, the
power of reading through nuts, boxes, and envelopes, remained, when
once induced, for about a month, and then disappeared. The same lady,
after three months, could no longer read without passes; and it took
five trials fully to restore the power. This may be done, however,
immediately by inducing the mesmeric sleep and clairvoyance in that
state, when the subjects, in the hands of Major Buckley, soon acquire
the power of waking clairvoyance.”
But stranger things remain behind—corollaries, however, of the
preceding, yet which eclipse these wonders, if possible. For a
knowledge of these, I am exclusively indebted to Professor Gregory’s
recent publication, and I give them on his authority.
If the looking intently upon a piece of metal will produce trance and
trance-umbra, why should not the account of the Egyptian boy-seers be
correct? If their performance be often a trick, may not the protracted
gaze on the black spot in their hand sometimes render them waking
clairvoyantes? and why, on the same showing, might not the gazing upon
magic crystals or mirrors of jet occasionally have thrown the already
awe-struck and fitly disposed lookers on them into the state in which
either the magician at their side might compel _suggestively_ images
into their fancy, or they, acting for themselves, have exercised
independent ultravision, retrovision, prevision? Why, again, should not
simple concentration of thought upon one uninteresting idea convert a
susceptible subject into a soothsayer? Then read the following facts
recorded by Dr. Gregory; I at least do not question their fidelity.
“Mr. Lewis possesses at times the power of spontaneous clairvoyance, by
simple concentration of thought. He finds, however, that gazing into a
crystal substance produces the state of waking clairvoyance in him much
sooner and more easily. On one occasion, being in a house in Edinburgh
with a party, he looked into a crystal, and saw in it the inhabitants
of another house at a considerable distance. Along with them he saw two
strangers, entire strangers to him. These he described to the company.
He then proceeded to the other house, and there found the two strangers
whom he had described.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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