Presentiments and prognosesWe borrow from the same article of the journal mentioned above, the following facts that accompany the notice on the priest Gassner, because Spiritism can draw a useful matter of instruction from that. The author of the article follows them with reflections, worthy of note, in this time of skepticism about extra material causes.
“Gassner had enjoyed great favor with the Empress Marie-Thérèse, who consulted him often, having some faith in his inspirations. It is said (see the Memoirs of Madam Campan) that at the time when the idea of uniting the daughter of Marie-Thérèse to the grandson of Louis XV had been conceived, the great empress called Gassner and asked him: "Will my Antoinette be happy?
Gassner, after thinking for a long time, turned strangely pale and persisted in remaining silent.
Pressed again by the Empress, and then seeking to give a general expression to the idea with which he seemed much occupied, he said: “Madam, there are crosses to all shoulders”.
The marriage took place on May 16th, 1770; the Dauphin and Marie-Antoinette received the nuptial blessings at the Chapel of Versailles (Marie-Antoinette had arrived in Compiègne on the 14th); at three o'clock in the afternoon the sky was covered with clouds, torrents of rain flooded Versailles; violent thunder bolts resounded, and the crowd of curious people that filled the garden were obliged to retire
The arrival of Marie-Antoinette at the palace of the kings of France (we read in the Public and private life of Louis XVI, by M. A … e de Salex; Paris, 1814, p. 340), was marked by one of those prognoses that we usually only remember when we see them come true in the course of time.
When this princess entered the courtyards of the Palace of Versailles for the first time, setting foot in the marble courtyard, a violent clap of thunder shook the castle: presage of misfortune, cried Marshal Richelieu.
The evening was sad in the city, and the illuminations had no effect.
Add to this the terrible accident that happened on May 30th, at the rue Royale, on the day of the feast given by the city of Paris, at Place Louis XV, for the wedding of the Dauphin and the Dauphine. Anquetil estimates in 300 the number of dead on the spot, and of 1,200 the number of those who died in the hospices or at home, a few days later, or who were crippled.
In 1757 (see the Posters of Tours, 25th year, No. 14, Thursday, April 5th, 1792), Madame de Pompadour called before Louis XV an astrologer who, after having calculated his birth star chart, said to him: “Sire, your reign is celebrated by great events, the one that follows will be celebrated by great disasters."
On the day of Louis XV's death there was a terrible storm in Versailles. What an accumulation of forecasts!
For eight years the queen's marriage was sterile. A daughter was born on December 19th, 1778; Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (later named by her husband’s Madame la Dauphine, Duchess of Angouleme). Three more years and on October 22nd, 1781 Marie-Antoinette gave an heir to the crown. The city of Paris offered the queen, on this occasion, a feast in which the most sumptuous munificence was displayed.
This feast took place on January 21st, 1782. Eleven years later the commune of Paris gave the people the spectacle of the King’s death. The Queen was in prison, waiting for Gassner's vision to be fulfilled.
Since we touched on these burning questions, listen again to Ms. Campan's revelations. It was May 1789; the days 4 and 5 had diversely impressed the minds; four candles lit up the Queen's cabinet, that recounted some remarkable accidents that had taken place during the day. “A candle went out on its own; I lit it up again, said Madame Campan; soon the second, then the third also died out; then the Queen, shaking his hand in horror, said to him: “Misfortune can make you superstitious; if this fourth candle goes out like the others, nothing can prevent me from looking at this sign as a sinister omen…”. The fourth candle went out!!! The Queen said that a few nights before she had a dreadful dream that kept her deeply affected.
No doubt, strong minds laugh at all these forecasts, all these prophecies, this gift of an earlier sight. They don't believe it or pretend not to believe it! But why then, in all epochs, there have been figures of some value, of some importance who, without any interest whatsoever, have affirmed facts of this kind that they have declared absolute, positive. Let us mention a few examples:
Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, grandfather of Madam de Maintenon, reports in his Memoirs that he had in his service, in Poitou, a deaf-mute by birth, endowed with the gift of divination. "One day," he said, "the daughters of the house asked him how many more years the King (Henry IV) would live, the time and the circumstances of his death, he replied to them three and a half years, and designated the city, the street and the carriage with the two stab wounds he would receive in the heart."
A few more words on this same Henry IV.
What judgment shall we pass on the dark presentiments only too frequent that this unfortunate prince had of his cruel destiny? - says Sully in his Memoirs, book XXVII. - They are of a singularity that has something frightening about it; I have already reported his reluctance in allowing the queen's coronation ceremony to take place before his departure; the more he saw the moment approaching, the more he felt the fear and horror redoubling in his heart; he came to open it completely to me, in that state of bitterness and overwhelm, that I took back as an unforgivable weakness. His own words will give an entirely different impression than anything I could say: - “Ah! my friend, he said to me, how much this coronation displeases me; I don't know what it is, but my heart tells me that something bad will happen to me.” He was sitting down on a low chair, that I had had made expressly for him, saying these words, and surrendered to all the darkness of his thoughts, his fingers tapping on the case of his glasses, dreaming deeply.
If he came out of this reverie, it was to stand up brusquely, clapping his hands on his thighs and to cry out: “For God sake, I will die in this city, I will never leave it; they will kill me; I can see that they are putting their last resource in my death! Ah! damn crowning, you will be the cause of my death!
My God, sire, I said to him one day, what thoughts are you indulging in there? If it continues, I believe you must cancel this coronation, the journey, and the war; do you want it? It will be done soon.
Yes, he said to me at last, after I had repeated this speech two or three times; yes, break this coronation, and let me hear no more about it; I will, by this means, have my mind cured of the impressions left there by some warnings; I will leave this city and fear nothing. "
By which sign would they recognize this secret and imperious cry of the heart, if they ignored these ones, that he said to me : “I do not want to hide from you, that I was told that I was to be killed at the first magnificence that I would do, and that I would die in a coach, and that's what makes me so fearful of it.”
“It seems, sire, that you have never said that to me,” I replied; I have been astonished several times, hearing you screaming in a coach, seeing you so sensitive before a little danger, after having seen you, so many times, fearless in the midst of cannon and musket shots, and among spears and naked swords; but since this opinion troubles you up to this point, in your place, sire, I would leave tomorrow: I would let the coronation take place without you, or I would postpone it to another time, and for a long time I would not return to Paris, nor take a coach; do you want me to send everything at this hour to Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis, to stop everything and dismiss the workers?
Yes, I do, said the prince to me again, but what will my wife say? She has this coronation in mind as a dream.
She will say what she wants, I said, seeing how much my proposal had pleased the king. But I could not believe that when she finds out how persuaded you are that this must be the cause of so much harm, she will continue with her opinion.
I did not wait for another order to go and have the preparations for the coronation stopped; It is with real regret that I see myself obliged to say that, whatever efforts I made, I have never been able to induce the queen to give this satisfaction to her husband.
I pass over in silence the solicitations, the prayers, and the arguments that I employed for three whole days to try to soften her; the prince had to yield. But Henry, nonetheless, was strongly back to his first apprehensions, that he usually expressed to me with these words, that he often had in his mouth: “Ah! my friend, I will never leave this town; they will kill me here! Oh, doomed coronation, you will be the cause of my death!"
This coronation took place in Saint-Denis, on Thursday, May 13th, and the queen was to make her entry into Paris on Sunday 16th, of the same month.
On the 14th, the king wanted to visit Sully, a visit he had announced for Saturday 15th, in the morning; he took his coach and got out, changing his route several times on the way, etc., etc.
Péréfixe, his historian, observes that "heavens and earth had given too many forecasts of what happened to him."
The Bishop of Rhodez puts, among these forecasts, an eclipse of the sun, the appearance of a terrible comet, earthquakes, monsters born in various regions of France, rains of blood that fell in some places, a great plague that had afflicted Paris in 1606, ghost appearances and several other wonders (see the History of Henry the Great by Hardouin de Péréfixe, bishop of Rhodez, Vie du Duc d'Epernon, French Mercure, Mathieu, l'Estoile, etc.).
Let's stop! we would write a volume, volumes, so many facts abound. But is it then so necessary to have recourse to the stories of others? Let everyone question themselves; that each one appeals to their own memories and respond with loyalty and frankness, and each one will say: There is in me an unknown, who is us, who at the same time commands my material self and obeys it. This stranger, spirit, soul, what is it? how is it? Why is it? Mystery; series of mysteries; inexplicable mystery. Like everything in nature, in the organism, in life, aren’t life and death two impenetrable mysteries? Sleep, this rehearsal of death, isn't it an inexplicable mystery? The assimilation of food, that becomes us: inexplicable, incomprehensible mystery! The Generation: mysterious darkness! This passive obedience of my fingers that trace these lines and obey my will: darkness whose depths God alone probes, and that is illuminated by Him alone, with the light of truth!
Bow your head, children of ignorance and doubt; humiliate this proud woman whom you call reason; free thinkers, submit to the chains that constrain your intelligence; bend the knee: only God knows!"
In these facts, there are two very distinct things to consider: the forebodings and the phenomena regarded as prognoses of future events.
One cannot deny the presentiments of which there are few people who have not had examples. It is one of those phenomena to which matter alone is powerless to explain, because if matter does not think, it cannot have a presentiment either. This is how materialism clashes, at every step, with the most vulgar things that contradict it.
To be warned in an occult way, of what is happening far away, and of which we can only know in a more or less near future, by ordinary means, something must emerge from us, see and hear what we cannot perceive by the eyes and the ears, to bring back the intuition to our brain. This something must be intelligent since it understands, and often from a present fact it foresees future consequences; this is how we, sometimes, have a presentiment of the future. This something is nothing other than us, our spiritual being, that is not confined in the body like a bird in a cage, but that like a captive balloon, momentarily moves away from earth, but still attached to it.
It is especially in the moments when the body is resting, during the sleep, that the Spirit, taking advantage of the break left to it by the care of its envelope, partly recovers its freedom and collects in space, among other incarnate like him or discarnate Spirits, and in what he sees, ideas whose intuition it keeps when wakes up.
This emancipation of the soul often takes place in the waking state; in moments of absorption, meditation and reverie, when the soul seems to be no longer preoccupied with earth; it takes place particularly in a more effective and conspicuous manner, in people endowed with what is called double sight or spiritual sight. Beside the personal intuitions of the Spirit, we must place those suggested to it by other Spirits, either in the wake or in the sleep, by the transmission of thoughts from soul to soul. This is how we are often warned of a danger, asked to take such or such a direction, without the Spirit being precluded from its free will. These are advices, not orders, for the Spirit always remains in control of acting as it pleases.
Presentiments, therefore, have their reason for being, and find their natural explanation in the spiritual life, in which we do not stop living for a moment, because it is the normal life.
It is not the same with the physical phenomena, considered as prognoses of happy or unhappy events. These phenomena, generally, have no connection with the things they seem to predict. They can be the precursors of physical effects, that are their consequences, as a black spot on the horizon can presage a storm to the sailor, or certain clouds announce hail, but the significance of these phenomena for the things of the moral order should be ranked among the superstitious beliefs, that can never be combated with enough energy.
Such belief, that rests absolutely on nothing rational, makes that, when an event occurs, one remembers some phenomenon that preceded it, and to which the affected mind connects, without worrying about the impossibility of relationships that only exist in the imagination. We do not think that the same phenomena are repeated daily, without resulting in anything untoward, and that the same events happen every moment without being preceded by any pretended precursor sign. If it is about events that concern general interests, credulous, or more often unofficial narrators, to exalt their importance in the eyes of posterity, amplify the forecasts that they struggle to make more sinister and more terrible, by adding alleged disturbances of nature, of which earthquakes and eclipses are the obligatory accessories, as the bishop of Rodez did in connection with the death of Henri IV. These fantastic stories, that often had their source in the interests of the parties, were accepted without examination by popular credulity, that saw, or that one wanted to make see, miracles in these strange phenomena.
As for the vulgar events, man himself is most often their first cause; not wanting to admit his own weaknesses, he seeks an excuse by blaming nature for the vicissitudes that are almost always the result of his improvidence and his lack of care. It is in his passions, in his personal faults that we must seek the true prognoses of his miseries, and not in nature that does not deviate from the path that God has traced for it, for the whole eternity.
Spiritism, by explaining by a natural law the true cause of presentiments, demonstrates, by that very fact, what there is of absurd in the belief of prognoses. Far from giving credit to superstition, it takes away its last refuge: the supernatural.
