The Spirit LandEmmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Religion
The Spirit Land
Emmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Spiritualism
A marked case of the increase of the _imitative power_ of persons
in the magnetic condition, is found in the case of Frederica Hauffe. In
one of her magnetic moods she informed Dr. Kerner that she would make a
diagram of the spheres. "The sun sphere," as she called it, is very
complex; but "she spun out the complicated web with unerring
precision," and a pair of compasses given her to facilitate her labor
only embarrassed her. It is made up of circles within circles, and
sections and points, amounting to thousands, related and connected; and
yet the "whole was executed," says Dr. K., "in an incredible short
space of time." An engraving was made of this sphere, and a year after
she was shown the engraving, and said it was not correct; a point on
one of the lines was wanting. On referring to the original, they found
she was right. This diagram contained many curious things, and in some
parts related to the highest departments of mathematics. This
_faculty_ she only possessed in the magnetic state, being wholly
incompetent to the task when not clairvoyant. No living artist can
execute that diagram with a pen, with a fac-simile before him, with the
rapidity with which that ignorant, unlettered child of nature did it.
"I have, in many cases," says Dr. Richmond, "witnessed this imitative
power of mediums with the pen, dashing off figures and images with a
rashness and rapidity almost inconceivable." As far as we can see,
there is no more proof of the agency of spirits in one case than in the
other; and we are sure no such claim was ever set up in the case of
Mrs. Hauffe, though living in a less enlightened region, perhaps, than
these United States. We might multiply cases of this kind, but space
will not permit.
UNSEEN LETTERS AND SIGNATURES.
The operator in biology or magnetism often lays hold of the inquiring
spectator, and uses him or her to imitate unseen letters, signatures,
and sentences, in foreign languages. And no doubt but what Professor
Bush has been made unconsciously instrumental in executing a few
specimens of languages, his eyes wide open, it may be, all the while.
It can be no more strange than that the son of Dr. Phelps should have
been made unconsciously instrumental in tying himself to the limb of a
tree in his father's yard, _supposing_ it to have been done by
_spirits_. (See the version of the affair by A. J. Davis.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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