Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein With an Account of Mesmerism

In the following Letters I have endeavoured to exhibit in their true light the singular natural phenomena of which old superstition and modern charlatanism in turn availed themselves—to indicate their laws, and to develop their theory. The subject is so important that I might well have approached it in a severer guise. But, slight as this performance may appear, I profess to have employed upon it the keenest and most patient efforts of reflection of which I am capable. And as to its tone at the commencement, and the prominence given to popular and trivial topics, I candidly avow that, without some such artifice, I doubt whether I should have found a publisher of repute to publish, or a circle of readers to read, my lucubrations.

“Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi Di soave licor gli orli del vaso; Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve, E dall’ inganno suo vita riceve.”

It was in the winter of 1846 that the original seven Letters were written, of which the present fourteen are the third and expanded reprint. The hour had come for successfully assailing certain already shaking prejudices of the reading public. The Selbstschau of Zschokke, and the researches of Von Reichenbach, were in the hands of the literary and philosophic. The seer-gift of the former (see Letter IV.) had established the fact that one mind can enter into direct though one-sided communion with another. The undenied Od-force of the latter (see Letter I.) is evidently the same influence with that, the first crude announcement of which, by Mesmer, had scared the world into disbelief. It had now become possible to explain ghostly warnings, and popular prophecies, the wonders of natural trance, and of animal magnetism, without having recourse to a single unproven principle. I therefore made the attempt; other more efficient labourers have co-operated in the same object; and public opinion is no longer hostile to this class of inquiries.

BAD WEILBACH, near MAYENCE, 1st August, 1851.

CONTENTS.

LETTER I. THE DIVINING-ROD.—Description of, and mode of using the same—Mr. Fairholm’s statement—M. de Tristan’s statement—Account of Von Reichenbach’s Od-force—The Author’s own observations, 9

LETTER II. VAMPYRISM.—Tale exemplifying the superstition—The Vampyr state of the body in the grave—Various instances of death-trance—The risk of premature interment considered—The Vampyr visit, 30

LETTER III. UNREAL GHOSTS.—Law of sensorial illusions—Cases of Nicolai, Schwedenborg, Joan of Arc—Fetches—Churchyard ghosts, 53

LETTER IV. TRUE GHOSTS.—The apparitions themselves always sensorial illusions—The truth of their communications accounted for—Zschokke’s seer-gift described, to show the possibility of direct mental communication—Second-sight—The true relation of the mind to the living body, 70

LETTER V. TRANCE.—Distinction of esoneural and exoneural mental phenomena—Abnormal relation of the mind and nervous system possible—Insanity—Sleep—Essential nature of trance—Its alliance with spasmodic seizures—General characters of trance—Enumeration of kinds, 86

LETTER VI. TRANCE-SLEEP.—The phenomena of trance divided into those of trance-sleep, and those of trance-waking—Trance-sleep presents three forms; Trance-waking two. The three forms of trance sleep described; viz., death-trance, trance-coma, simple or initiatory trance, 98

LETTER VII. HALF-WAKING TRANCE, OR SOMNAMBULISM.—The same thing with ordinary sleep-walking—Its characteristic feature, the acting of a dream—Cases, and disquisition, 106

LETTER VIII. TRANCE-WAKING.—Instances of its spontaneous occurrence in the form of catalepsy—Analysis of catalepsy—its three elements: double consciousness, or pure waking-trance; the spasmodic seizure; the new mental powers displayed—Cases exemplifying catalepsy—Other cases unattended with spasm, but of spontaneous occurrence, in which new mental powers were manifested—Oracles of antiquity—Animal instinct—Intuition, 116

LETTER IX. RELIGIOUS DELUSIONS.—The seizures giving rise to them shown to have been forms of trance brought on by fanatical excitement—The Cevennes—Scenes at the tomb of the Abbé Paris—Revivals in America—The Ecstatica of Caldaro—Three forms of imputed demoniacal possession—Witchcraft; its marvels, and the solution, 136