Review of Our Foreign Spiritualistic Exchenges
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Sensitive Moments
Sir,—I for one respond to your request, once made, to give information about times of special sensitiveness, though I have no claim to be either a sensitive or a medium. Upon two occasions within the past year and a half I have felt and seen apparitions, which a second person has accurately described to me, in response to a mere general request to say what could be seen. The descriptions were given in accordance with what I saw, and there is not the slightest reason to believe that there was any act of mesmeric thought-reading.
On another occasion I had the feeling of holding a conversation with a disembodied spirit, the substance of which conversation was accurately given by the same (alleged) spirit through a mesmerised person. This, however, might possibly having been thought-reading, but I have never yet met with proof of such, and I tried, whilst experimenting, to avoid possibility of thought-reading. On another occasion I saw a hand with flowers, and also a dome tower with a clock; the hands of the clock were at about 1.20, whilst the time of day was about 10.5 a.m. Both these facts were confirmed by the entranced sensitive, though how it was possible for myself) as the mesmeriser, to see a domed clock- tower (which the mesmerised afterwards described as in some foreign town) at the time both saw it, I am unable to explain.
I experimented with planchette for a long time without any result, real or imaginary, although it worked with members of my family. On one occasion I requested the presiding power to teach me also. Upon this I felt a tingling sensation through all my body, as if I were pricked slightly with pins; my brain seemed benumbed, and my head to swim in a cloudy mist, and there was a sort of impulse to write which made a movement of the machine, and passed away in about half-a-minute. I should imagine it to be the feeling which a person would have if mesmerised, and the feeling was similar upon the two occasions mentioned at the commencement of this letter; it was as if one set of senses was closed, and a new sense opened.
Some eight years ago, whilst studying Rosicrucianism, I employed some invocations to the higher spirits of fire, and beheld at that time an appearance which I again saw more dimly. The same spirit appeared more clearly to a mesmerised sensitive, and was accurately described as I had seen it. I recognised it as a friend of our family. Upon being questioned as to the cause of my first seeing the appearance, the spirit said, “I was laid amongst the flowers by the crystal waters of the sixth heaven, when a voice told me to rise and follow a pencil-like ray of light, which would lead me to one whom I was to watch over.” I remember also a curious incident which occurred to me perhaps twenty-three years ago, when I was reading up on hypnotism. I ordinarily never dream, but by following the rules of that system, I could induce very nice landscape dreams. Upon one occasion I willed myself to awake at seven o’clock. About that time I had a consciousness that I was asleep, and wished to know the time; my watch was under the pillow, and the pillow seemed to become transparent, and to offer no impediment to my seeing the time. I resolved to awake, turned down the pillow, and behold, my watch gave the exact instant I had previously seen it indicate— that is, three and a half minutes past seven. I imagine this to be what is called clairvoyance. Twelve months ago I should have said these things were “only imagination;” but I am, after many tests, at a loss to say how imagination, which was not real, could explain them. As to trance lucidity in others, I have proved its reality many times in a way which could be explained "only by various impossible collusions. I shall still experiment, and report in due course, in case I find the phenomena as unreliable as the materialistic doctors.
Withington, Manchester.
Astrology and Evolution
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Editor's notes
Sources
London Spiritualist, No. 308, July 19, 1878, p. 33