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... | ''To the Editor of the Spiritual Scientist:'' | ||
{{Style S-Small capitals|Dear Sir}}: —Your readers and the general public are aware that the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, the chief governmental educational institution of Russia, had decided upon a thorough scientific investigation of the phenomena of Modern Spiritualism, and that the most eminent professors of the nation had been assigned to the duty. It is also known that Madame Blavatsky, an erudite Russian lady resident in this country, and I, have been honored with a commission to test and forward such mediums as we might consider best fitted to exemplify the nature and potency of the occult force designated as mediumistic power. | |||
I have the satisfaction to announce that the work is already in progress, and that satisfactory results have been attained with the first medium tested. A letter has just been received by Madame Blavatsky from M. Aksakof, Councillor of State in the Imperial Chancellery, in which these facts are stated. M. Aksakof and Prof. Boutlerof of the University visited England in September, and selected from among English mediums, two boys named Petty, of whom one is 13 and the other 17 years old. He describes the experiment as follows: — | |||
We placed the elder one, well secured, behind a curtain, stretched across the corner of the room. Before him stood a table, and on this we fixed a wooden cage about one cubic foot in site, which could be securely locked with a key. In the walls of the cage the apertures were not larger than would admit the insertion of a lead pencil. Inside the cage a hand bell was placed, and the door was then locked, the key removed, and the room darkened. The bell was soon rung loudly and repeatedly. It was a splendid test! | |||
With respect to the personnel of the committee and its plans, M. Aksakof | |||
says; — | |||
I am extremely satisfied with our scientific committee. Nothing more could be desi ed in this respect Without exception they are so amiable and so ready to comply with any reasonable conditions demanded, that it would be a great misfortune if Spiritualists were not to profit by the opportunity now offered for a thorough investigation. . . . They have adopted a resolution to hold forty official seances, beginning about May 13 next, and continuing to September I, omitting the regular summer vacation. They allow twenty of these forty sittings to be failures from one cause or another; but if after the course closes they shall not have found anything worthy of scientific notice, they will consider themselves absolved from, undertaking any further inquiry ink the subject. | |||
He adds a fact of interest to those who have taken exception to what I have advanced concerning the probable agency of the “elementary spirits” of the Rosicrucians, in producing the physical phenomena of our circles. | |||
"Perhaps,” says he, “it will be interesting for you to know that Prince A. Dolgorouky, the great authority of mesmerism, has written me that he has ascertained that spirits which play the most prominent part at seances, are elementaries — gnomes, etc. His clairaoyants have seen them and describe them thus.” | |||
Prof. Boutlerof’s account of personal investigations in Spiritualistic phenomena, was to appear in the next number of the Russian Messenger of Moscow, an official journal; and Prof. N. Wagner, the distinguished zoologist, had sent to the same journal a lengthy notice of Mr. Crooke's experiments and a review of my own work, “People from the Other World.” | |||
Our eminent correspondent truthfully adds, in concluding: “We are crossing a real epoch here.” | |||
Yours Respectfully, | |||
{{Style P-Signature in capitals|Henry S. Olcott}} | |||
New York, Dec. 16, 1875. | |||
{{Footnotes}} | {{Footnotes}} | ||
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<gallery widths=300px heights=300px> | |||
spiritual_scientist_v.03_n.16_1875-12-23.pdf|page=12|Spiritual Scientist, v. 3, No. 7, October 21, 1875, p.79 | |||
</gallery> | |||