In the Spiritist Review of 1864 we gave a detailed report of the observations that we had just carried out of a peasant from the Berne Canton, a person that had the skill of seeing far away things in a glass. New visits done this year allowed us to complete those observations and rectify, in certain points, the theory that we had produced about the objects commonly called magic mirrors, or more precisely, psychic mirrors. Since we seek the truth, before anything else, and since we do not pretend to be infallible, whenever we are in error we do not hesitate in acknowledging that. We know nothing sillier than clinging oneself on a wrong opinion. In order to understand what follows, and to avoid repetition, we urge our readers to report to the article mentioned above, containing detailed news about the clairvoyant and his modus operandi.
We will just remind you that the name magic mirror is given to objects of multiple types and shapes, almost always shiny, like glass, bottles and metallic plates, in which certain persons see remote things. We were convinced by a careful observation that such a vision is not but the double sight or the spiritual or psychic sight, independent of the organic sight, for experience daily demonstrates that such a faculty exists without the support of any object, having then concluded in absolute terms that the objects are useless, thinking that the habit of using them made them necessary, and that every individual that sees with their help could perfectly see without them, if wanted. It is here that we are mistaken, as we shall demonstrate.
We must first give a quick report of the observed events since they are the basis of the instructions that were provided.
We then returned to the home of that man, accompanied by Mr. Commander W… that kindly operated as our interpreter, he promptly dealt with our health; he easily and accurately described its location, the cause, the nature and indicated the necessary medication. Next, and without being asked, he talked about our work, the objective and results, as he did the year before, but he did not keep any memory of that; at this time, he went much deeper into the subject, whose reach he seemed to have understood better. He described in detail the evolution of the idea, and the future of our cause, about the issues that may produce this or that result, about the obstacles that we shall face and the means of overcoming them, about the persons that may play a role in favor or against, those whose devotion and honesty we can or cannot count on, describing them physically and morally, demonstrating that he could see them perfectly well. In a word, he gave us remarkable instructions, extensively elaborated and logically motivated, even more remarkable for confirming and completing, for certain aspects, those given to us by our spiritual guides. The parts that we could assess the accuracy left no doubt about his clairvoyance. After the several conversations we had with him he always returned to the same subject, confirming or denying it, never entering into contraction with himself, even on those things that he said the year before, seemingly continued by the current dialogues.
Since this current instruction is absolutely personal and confidential, we abstain from reporting its details. We just mention it due to the important fact that comes out of that and that is reported next. It is undoubtedly of the highest interest to us, but our main objective in seeing that man again was to develop new studies about his skills, to the interest of the Spiritist science.
We attested the fact that his lucidity cannot be forced. He sees what is presented to him and reports it, but he cannot be led to see what he wants to see, nor something that someone is thinking about, although he can read one’s mind. In the main session dedicated to us we uselessly tried to call his attention to other subjects; despite his efforts he said he could not see anything about that in the glass.
When he is dealing with a subject we can ask him questions about it but it is useless to question him about anything else that may occur to us. Yet, sometimes he abruptly changes from the current subject that he is dealing with to another one completely strange; he then goes back to the first one. When he is asked about the reason for that he answers what he sees and that it does not depend on him.
He spontaneously sees absent people when they are directly connected to the object of examination, but not otherwise. His starting point is the consulting person and her home. From there other facts follow. We then uselessly tried the following experiment: one of our Parisian friends that had just sent us a letter wanted to consult with him about the illness of his daughter. We showed him the letter and had him holding it at the bottom of the glass, thinking that the radiation of the fluid would facilitate the vision of that person. He did not do that because the reflex of the white paper bothered him; he said that the person was too far away, however, a few moments earlier he had just described a person whom we were not absolutely thinking about, as her place of residence, four times more distant. But this person was involved in the matter that we were dealing with whereas the other one was completely strange to the subject. The chain of events would lead him to one and not the other.
Hence, his lucidity is not flexible or manageable and absolutely does not align with the will of the questioner. It is not, in any way, ready to satisfy curiosity. In fact, as he reads the mind, his first act is to investigate the intention of the visitor, in case she is unknown. If the intention is not serious, and if the objective is neither moral nor useless, he refuses to speak and dismisses anyone that comes to him seeking what is called their good luck or asking futile or indiscrete questions. In one word, he is a serious clairvoyant and not a foreteller. His clairvoyance, as we said before, is mostly applicable to the springs and the underground natural water courses. He only handles other things as an accessory or out of condescendence. He is ignorant with respect to sciences but due to his lucidity he has a natural sense that frequently replaces acquired knowledge. Here is an example.
One day, in our presence, someone questioned him about the possibility of having a mine in a given place. There is none, he said, because the terrain is not adequate. We made him realize that the source of certain mineral mines sometimes is far away from where they show up, infiltrating through the earthly layers. “
It is true, he said, but there are regions where the layers are flat and others where they are vertical. They are vertical in the one that was asked and that is the obstacle.” Where did he get that idea from about the direction of the earthly layers since he had no clue about geology?
We observed him carefully throughout the course of his activities and here is what we noticed: once he is seated, he takes his glass, as described in our previous article, his eyes move back and forth from the bottom of the glass to the assistants and for about fifteen minutes he talks about uninteresting things, after which he then touches the central subject. At that moment his naturally lively and penetrating eyes are semi-closed, then watchful and agitated; the pupils disappear at the top, showing the whites of the eyes. Once in a while, when staring at someone, the pupils are partially seen again to then completely disappear; he continues, however, to look at the bottom of the glass and to the lines that he draws with a piece of chalk. It is obvious that during that trance he does not see through his eyes. With this only exception there is nothing else abnormal about him. His language is that of a serious and righteous man; his language is simple with emphasis like in an ordinary state instead of in a trance. In the evening of our main session we asked the good Spirits, through a writing medium, to give us instruction about the events that he had just witnessed.
Q – What to think of the spontaneous revelations given to us today by the clairvoyant of the forest? A – We wanted to give you a proof of that man’s faculty. We prepared the subject about which he should speak and that is why he could not respond to the other questions you framed. What he told you was just our opinion. You were surprised with what he said. He spoke for us, unknowingly, and right now he no longer remembers what he said, as he did not remember what he said last year because his spark of intelligence cannot get there. He not even understood the reach of his own words; he spoke better than the medium present here because this one would be afraid of saying too much. That is why we utilized him as a more manageable instrument for the instructions that we wanted to give.
Q – He mentioned a person whose moral and physical profile and position seemed to be such a person. Could you confirm that? A. – He said what you needed to know.
Observation: It is therefore evident that at least by accident the mediumship faculty is added to that man’s natural skills, if not in a permanent way; it means that lucidity is personal to him and not a matter of Spirits, but the Spirits may guide that lucidity as they wish in a given case; they inspire what he must say and only allow him to say what needs to be said. Hence, according to the need, he is an unconscious medium. The faculty of distant vision and the ability to see through opaque bodies do not seem extraordinary or incomprehensible to us since it is a sense that we do not enjoy in our normal state. We are exactly like the born-blind that cannot understand the fact that it is possible to understand reality, the shapes and properties of objects without touching them, and do not understand the fact that the luminous fluid is the means that put us in contact with the faraway objects, bringing their images to us. Without the knowledge of the spiritual fluid we cannot understand vision without the support of the eyes. We are true blinds with that regard. Now, the faculty of far sight with the help of the luminous fluid
[1] and without the help of the eyes is not more fantastic or more miraculous than that of seeing the celestial bodies thousands of miles away.
Q. – Could you kindly let us know if the glass used by this man is truly useful to him; could he equally see in any other glass, any other object or even without any object, if he wanted to; if the need and specialty of the glass were not due to habit, that leads him to believe that it is indispensable; and finally if the presence of the glass is truly necessary and which effect does that object has upon his lucidness?
A. – When his eyes are focused on the bottom of the glass the shiny reflex acts there first and then upon his nervous system, provoking a kind of somnambulism, or more precisely, awake somnambulism in which the spirit, detached from matter, acquire a clairvoyance or a vision of the soul that you call second sight. There is a certain relationship between the shape of the bottom of the glass and the external shape of his eyes. That is the reason why he cannot easily find a glass that provides the required conditions (see the article published in the issue of October 1864). Even when the glasses are apparently similar there are nuances in the reflecting power, radiation, form and thickness that you cannot realize and that are appropriate to his individual organism. The glass, therefore, is to him a means of developing and focusing his lucidness. It is necessary to him since his lucidness is not permanent and needs to be provoked; it could not be replaced by another object and that same object that produces such effect on him would produce nothing on someone else, even if that person were a clairvoyant. The means of provoking such lucidness vary from individual to individual.
Here we achieved the core of the proposed discussion. The preceding explanation resolves the issue with perfect clarity. Everything is in contained in these words: lucidness is not permanent in that man. The glass is a means of provoking it by the action of radiation upon his nervous system, but it is necessary that the radiation be in accordance with his physical organization. Hence the variety of objects that may produce such effect, according to the individuals prone to receive them. It follows that:
Certain particularities of our clairvoyant find their reason in that explanation. The letter placed underneath the glass disturbed him instead of facilitating, because it modified the characteristics of the reflex that was specific to that glass.
As we said, in the beginning he talks about frivolous things while he stares at the glare. The reason being that the action is not instantaneous and that preliminary conversation, without an apparent objective, is necessary to give him time for the effect to be produced. As much as the lucidness state only develops gradually, it does stops suddenly either. That is why the man continues to see for a few moments, even after having stopped looking at the glass and that is the reason why we thought that the glass was useless. But since the lucidity is a kind of artificial state, from time to time he goes back to the glass to keep it.
The development of that faculty through a material means is understandable to a certain extent. However, how can the image of someone that is far away be presented in the glass? It is only Spiritism that can resolve this question by the explanation about the nature of the soul, its faculties, the properties of its spiritual envelope, its radiation, its power of emancipation and detachment from the body. In the emancipation state the soul enjoys perceptions that are proper, without the support of material organs; the vision is an attribute of the spiritual being; the soul sees by itself, without the need for the eyes, as it hears without the ears. If the organs of the human senses were indispensable to the perceptions of the soul it would follow that, after death, without such organs the soul would be blind and deaf. The complete separation that takes place after death occurs only partially during life and that is when the phenomenon of spiritual vision takes place or, put differently, the double sight, or second sight, or psychic vision, whose power reaches as far as the radiation of the soul.
In the case above the image is not formed in the body of the glass; it is the soul itself that perceives the object where it is, by its own radiation. However, considering that for that man the glass is the provoking agent of the lucid state, the image appears very naturally to him in the direction of the glass. It is absolutely like the one that requires glasses that see far away what cannot be seen with naked eyes. The image of the object is not in the lenses of the binoculars but in their direction. Once the instrument is removed, nothing can be seen. Still with the comparison, the one that enjoys good vision does not require glasses like the one that enjoys a good psychic vision does not require artificial means to have it provoked.
A few years back a doctor discovered that by placing a cap of a bottle or a crystal ball or a shiny metal at the root of the nose and converging light beams to that object for some time the person would fall into a cataleptic state in which some of the faculties that are observed in somnambulists would manifest like, among others, insensitivity and far sight through opaque bodies, and that such a state would gradually disappear after the object was removed. It was obviously a magnetic effect produced by an inert body. What is the physiologic role of the shiny object in that phenomenon? We do not know. But it was attested that such condition may be necessary in the majority of cases but not always and that the same effect is produced on certain individuals with soft objects.
The phenomenon that was named hypnotism caused uproar in the scientific world. There was experimentation. Some were successful, others were not, as it was meant to be since the aptitudes were not the same among all patients. If the object of study were exceptional it would certainly be worth the study. But, regrettably, once it was noticed that it was a secret door for the penetration of magnetism and somnambulism, with a different name in the sanctuary of the official science, hypnotism was no longer studied (see Spiritist Review, January 1860).
Nature, however, never loses its own rights. If the laws are unknown for some time they come back so many times, presenting themselves in so many ways that forces people to have their eyes open. Spiritism is a proof of that. It can be denied, mocked, repelled; it knocks on all doors in a hundred different ways and willing or not it reaches those who did not want to hear about it.
Comparing this to the phenomenon that we were discussing above we can observe a remarkable analogy in the causes and effects. From that we can conclude that the objects commonly called magic mirrors are not but hypnotic agents, infinitely varied in their form and effects, according to the nature and degree of the aptitudes.
Hence, it would be possible that certain persons spontaneously and accidentally gifted with those faculties would regardless suffer the magnetic influence of exterior objects at which they mechanically stare at. Why wouldn’t the reflex of water, a lake, a swamp, a creek or even a celestial body produce the same effect of a glass of water or a bottle upon certain physical organizations conveniently predisposed? But that is a hypothesis that requires confirmation by experience. Besides, that phenomenon is not a modern discovery. It is found, even in our times, amongst the most delayed peoples, with the confirmation that nature is the privilege of times and all places. In the beginning it is accepted as a fact; the explanation comes later, with the advancement of mankind and the understanding of the laws that govern the world.
These are the consequences that seem to logically follow the observed facts.
[1] As we speak the Siècle publishes an interesting romance by Élie Berthet with the title Double Vision. It is timely. About two years ago Mr. Xavier Saintine had published in the “Constitutionnel” a series of facts based on the plurality of existences and on the spontaneous relationships that are established between the living and the dead. That is how literature helps in the promotion of the new ideas. The only thing missing is the word “Spiritism”.
