HPB-SB-1-56: Difference between revisions

Col. Henry S. Olcott writes to the Tribune that it is his belief, after much study and experimentation, that a majority of the phenomena attributed to agency of disembodied human spirits are, in fact, due to another class of beings, who do not partake of our future existence, who have intelligence and craft, but not yet that immortal breath of God which we call the soul, and the Occultists the Augoeides (Aigoeides)—in short, to the “elementary spirits.’’ What these creatures are may be ascertained, he says, by the diligent and intelligent student who chooses to consult the standard works written upon the Hermetic and other Occult philosophies. In brief, adds Col. Olcott, they bear about the same relation to man as he exists upon this and other inhabited planets as the sketch of the artist to the finished painting. He proceds to describe them, however, and giving a minute account of their depraved and frivolous moral condition, it appears that they are the spirits of future human beings waiting to be born upon this sphere. But besides these “elementary spirits” there is a “large residuum of real apparitions, who give genuine messages through mediums. Col. Olcott comes to support this theory of the Occultist, because the “embryonic men” account for the incongruities, contradictions, puerilities and disgusting features” of the spiritualistic manifestations. The letters of Col. Olcott have brought out from three well-known scientific gentlemen belonging to the Liberal Club of New York City, a card over their own names, in which they say:

Some years ago, the “unspiritual members,” of the club suggested that the undersigned, being one physicist, one physician who made a specialty of nervous diseases, and one lawyer, with such assistants as they might find necessary, should act as a committee to investigate “spiritual facts and phenomena,” within this city or vicinity. This committee have been and still are waiting for more business. This offer is not made to gratify an idle curiosity. It has seemed to us that “the phenomena,” even if they are not “facts of Spiritualism,” may have a scientific value. So far as we have been able to discover, however, we find no “spirit hypothesis” needed to account for them. They all fall quite readily under one or more of the following categories: —I. Fraud; 2. Illusion; 3. Delusion; 4. Disease.

If any man or woman can produce or knows of phenomena that they will assert upon their honor that they believe cannot be so produced, the undersigned will give such phenomena and their conditions a careful, and as far as possible, a scientific investigation.