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reliable witnesses. I will relate one of this character. While in Madras I was several days the guest of Mr. D. S. White, residing in Kilpauk. This gentleman, connected with the Board of Education, and Assistant-Registrar of Assurances, is a free-thinker on all matters religious and political. Accompanied by him, two Eurasian gentlemen connected with the publication of the Anglo-Indian, and a few others, I repaired to a native’s house, to see the phenomena of casting out a demon among the lower class Hindus. The subject was a woman, and not, I confess, a very prepossessing one. Her eye was dull; the surface of the hand cool, moist, clammy, and the whole appearance stupid in the extreme. Inquiring of the mother, through my interpreter, I learned that this young woman had, in the first place, spells of being very silent, of looking into vacancy, and refusing to notice her friends. These peculiarities were followed by tremblings, whirling motions of the head, and other obsessional conduct, till she refused to bathe, to comb her hair, or speak. It was pronounced, “possession by a dumb devil.”
They sent for a “devil-priest,” as they familiarly term them, one gifted with the power of exorcism. He could not attend, and, after some waiting, a “priestess” came, and then another. A circle was drawn in the sand in front of the hut, one of these mediumistic women stepping inside of the circular area became spasmodic, the head began to whirl; she was soon entranced, and called for camphor. A rude lamp of cocoa-nut oil was burning just outside the circle, and the incense-smoke of the camphor came from the interior of the circle. At this point another woman was entranced by a spirit speaking a different dialect. And now while the incense-smoke was dying away, they brought and placed the obsessed Tamil woman within the area of the circle. Then followed rude music, with threatenings and coaxings of the demoniacal spirit to leave. It was a failure. And now, unexpectedly to Mr. White, his servant woman who had been in his employ for twelve years, was suddenly entranced, constituting herself master of the ceremonies. This servant woman, Mrs. Anthraci, declared that the other women failed because controlled by evil spirits. She then commanded the dress of the obsessed woman to be changed, a new mat to be placed for her to sit upon, the green branch from a tree to be brought, and some frankincense to be burned. It was all done. Then she beat the obsessed woman’s body with a rod, “pathetised” her head, invoked the gods, &c., &c., and “the dumb devil left.” This was one of the many phenomena I witnfessed among the lower and poorer classes, Those that I saw in Hindu high life, and especially among the Dravida Brahmans, I do not propose to peddle about too cheaply. I psychologised quite a number in India. The Hindus being mild, negative, and sensitive, are easy subjects.
Owing to introductions to native princes, and distinguished Brahmans and Mahomedans, when dining with His Grace the Duke of Buckingham, Governor of Madras, and also at the levee held by Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, I was put into fraternal relations with some of the most distinguished native Brahmans of India. And to some of these I am under deep and lasting obligations. To say that these gentlemen “imposed upon me,” is to insult them.
When Mr. W. L. D. O’Grady, editor of the American Builder, and late of the Bank of Madras, writes hereafter upon “Hindu Psychology,” will he have the kindness not to measure my knowledge of this subject by his yard-stick of arrogance?
The last Banner of Light, just put into my hands, makes me say I had a glorious time with Buddhist priests in India. It should have read Brahman priests. Probably my careless penmanship caused the blunder. It was in Ceylon, China, and other Eastern countries that I saw so many Buddhist priests.
J. M. Peebles, M. D.
London, January 8th, 1878.
Present or Departed?
Sir,—Common sense being usually, even if fallaciously, alleged to meet the spiritualistic position, one is hardly prepared to agree with Mr. White -in making it do duty on the opposite side, so as to “apprehend that common sense will draw us back to the conclusion that spirits are what they represent themselves to be, namely, ‘men and women, &c.’” What is common sense? Is it any criterion of certainty? If the evidence of the senses be meant, how is illusion to be avoided? If the assistance of reason be invoked, what is the standard of appeal? Suppose, for example, it seems common sense to me that alphabetic writing should represent only the sound of speech, is it common sense for other people to introduce considerations of authority, history, etymology? Or if orthography be hardly a question of common sense, is Spiritualism more so? If it is, does not common sense teach, rightly or wrongly, that when we leave the world at death, we cannot return at leisure? Evidence to the contrary is not only exceptional, but involves exceptional conditions, and appeals generally either to foregone conclusions, or to other perceptions than those of common sense, which must be inadequate to the purpose, or we should not find Dr. Slade and the Davenports on the one hand believing in the intervention of departed spirits, and Mrs. Hardinge and Mr. Watkins, or Col. Olcott, “T. J.,” and Dr. Wyld on the other, denying that this is always or necessarily the case. It is not fair to claim the voice of common sense on one side more than on the other. We are either above or below the plane, not on it.
In some Angelic and Holy Communications, published anonymously many years ago, we were told that—
“Table manifestations, hand-guiding, drawings, are all of mundane origin. It is the work of abnormal nature; spirit proper has nothing whatever to do with it.”
In Art Magic we read:—
“There are no phenomena produced by disembodied spirits which may not be effected by the still embodied human spirit, provided a correct knowledge of these powers is directed by a strong and powerful will.”
la Swedenborg we are informed that—
“Every man has an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior.... These two minds are altogether distinct; by the inferior mind man is in the natural world, together with men there; but by the superior mind he is in the spiritual world, with the angels there. These two minds are so distinct that man, so long as he lives in the world, does not know what is performing within himself in his superior mind, and when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is performing in his inferior mind.” A.E. 527.
It would seem to follow from the last statement, that the departed spirit is wholly unconscious of the manifestation—a view difficult of apprehension, and certainly beyond the range of common sense. But I take leave to submit that it is not worthy of the careful investigator to rely on a criterion which, to say the least, is as likely to be fallacious as to be true.
January 7th.
<Untitled> (The Lengthy paper, by “M.A.” (Oxon.))
Sir,—The lengthy paper, by “M.A.” (Oxon.), which appeared in the last number of The Spiritualist, requires comment. For my own part, I am at a loss to understand why it was written. It professes to deal with three opponents of the “cardinal dogmas” of the spiritual faith, and as I happen to form one of the trio, I may be allowed to criticise the critic. I believe it is the bounden duty of a controversialist to be exact in quoting the conclusions arrived at by his adversary—even if the language itself should not be employed. No one asks more loudly than “M.A.” himself, in his onslaughts upon Dr. Carpenter, for accuracy of expression, and yet we find him one of the first to mislead by erroneous excerpts. “We have believed, that through the gate of mediumship we have access to the world of spirit, and that through the same gate the spirits of our dead were able, under certain restrictions, to return and speak with us.” This is a “cardinal dogma,” which I for one am blamed for attacking, it being “the central fact round which the whole fabric of Spiritualism is built up.” Now let us see how far “M.A.” does us justice. Dr. Wyld, we are informed, “tells us that we have no proof of the return of the departed,” whereas his very words are “the spirits of the departed have a thousand times reappeared as ghosts before taking their final leave of the world,” and again in another column, where the learned doctor is arguing on the possibility of the manifestations being produced by embodied spirits, heremarks, “I wish it to be distinctly kept in mind that I do not say all the phenomena we are acquainted with are so produced.” So far, then, Dr. Wyld does not demolish the “cardinal dogma” of “M.A.”
Turning to Colonel Olcott, to ascertain how he effects the “dogma,” I do not see that it is much injured at his hands. Even “M.A.” admits that the Colonel allows that objective physical manifestations may be produced through a medium by “the spirits of the departed.”
Lastly, I cannot understand how the communication of “T. J.” in any way has reference to the “cardinal dogma.” Assuredly, there was nothing in his article to warrant the inference that spirits do not communicate through mediums, and because the examples given through one particular medium happened to bear out much of the theosophic theory, “M.A.” can afford to be peculiarly funny at the expense of accuracy. “M.A.” ventures to suggest a remedy for these spirit vagaries. It is the old one, but unfortunately does not always apply. We are told to “purify our circles.” I have seen this done, and half a dozen worthy Christians listening, through a medium, to exhortations from “St. Peter” and “St. Paul” by the hour—given through the lips of an entranced medium, in language which the men of Jewry or Athens would not have tolerated for a moment. I have seen in the quiet of a home circle, when the planchette has been used, a message written out describing the horrible death of a relative in a distant land, when no thought of such a person was present in the minds of the company. The name, age, and minute particulars were given to “identify” the spirit of the deceased woman, and of course the statement, so apparently truthful, was believed, until weary months afterwards letters arrived showing that the whole story of the planchette was a bit of as abominable a fiction as could be conceived of. It is useless for “M.A.” to tell me that the circle had anything to do with such a message. Is it possible that the embodied spirits of the family would have concocted a tale of murder for their own amusement? The theosophical elementaries are a more likely explanation. I fancy “M.A.” must be unacquainted with the mediumship of the Durham, Yorkshire, and Lancashire district. If he made a tour through some of the “circles”—not “promiscuous” ones, but those confined to earnest truth-seekers—he would find much to amuse, and not a little to astound him. At several there are the healing controls, who declare that they were medical men in earth-life, and talk rather learnedly on the subject, until you suddenly prove them to be arrant “quacks” from the expressions they let fall. Let me guard myself by saying, this is not everywhere the case, but frequently so.
A hackneyed expression is made use of by “M.A.”—“a theory which pretends to explain facts must explain all the facts, or it is worthless.” Certainly. But one theory will explain one set of facts, whilst it takes another theory for a dissimilar set. One theory is not going to cover all the facts of Spiritualism, though it may embrace those which have a relevancy for each other. If my theory as to <... continues on page 4-144 >
Editor's notes
London Spiritualist, No. 281, January 11, 1878, p. 21