CHAPTER II

THE AUTOMATIST

A well-known psychic investigator once jokingly complained to me that the telephone service of the spirit world seemed to be as unreliable and badly damaged as that of Great Britain. Certainly, communication is often freakish and intermittent, and the ethical value of the teachings received at great length and painstakingly transcribed is often completely valueless.

It must be remembered that we who are conducting research in psychic matters have a poor range of instruments or tools to work with. There must inevitably be the human medium, and long experience has taught me that in the case of automatic writing one must be prepared to recognize the intrusion of the medium’s own thought-processes into the record received from the spirit world.

That these interpolated writings are conscious frauds by the mediums we can unhesitatingly deny, but they appear to be either unconscious records of the medium’s own thoughts or else the re-transmitted subconscious thought-processes of the medium echoed back by the control.

I have hopes that in the future we shall be able to devise an appliance for the recording of automatic writing in which the function of the medium will be purely that of a bridge between the two planes and in which the physical act of writing will be mechanically performed.[2]

The difficulty in automatic writing lies in the association of ideas, and one word written by a planchette or spelt out by an ouija traverser leads to the stimulation of a train of thought in the subconscious mind even though the conscious brain may be in the trance state.

The difficulty is to piece together what can be termed the true spirit messages out of the mass of pseudo-communications that surround them. The analysis of the familiar examples of “cross-correspondence” are a valuable guide in the complexities that are involved in the question.

A popular idea of the difficulty of communication can be gained by imagining a man in a telephone exchange in London trying to talk to Newcastle. He can go from instrument to instrument and speak through, but all the instruments keep on going out of order, so that only disconnected fragments of communication pass over one wire.

This would not matter if the person with whom he wishes to talk were also in an exchange at Newcastle. He, too, could pass to other instruments, but we must imagine the mortal recipient of spirit messages as a subscriber with only one defective instrument.[3]

Difficult as the subject of automatic writing is, it is from these writings that the Spiritualist conception of life in the next world is gleaned.

Many a student has found eloquent, fluent, and convincing description of the life beyond the veil flow from his pen when the spirit controls were working well. Other writers have had accounts of terrors beyond the veil: shocking and astonishing revelations of new concepts of evil, exotic violences of the soul, and even direct incitements to the commission of criminal acts in this plane.

Spiritualists are accustomed to divide these spirits into classes of good and bad, and it has been assumed on all too slender grounds that only the “good” spirits tell the truth about the other planes.

There are bad and lying spirits, just as there are wicked and untruthful men, but latterly there has been a distinct tendency to suppress all mention of the bad communicators and to attempt the organization of Spiritualist and psychic investigation as an unorthodox ascending sect organized as a distinct church or religious body. This tendency would be fatal to the progress of occult investigation.

The professional mediums, on the other hand, realize that to attain financial success, organization, and the establishment of a mediumistic hierarchy is essential. Bad spirits are bad business and it is bad form to mention them outside certain circles.

Any investigator of experience will recognize at once that the spirits of suicides are frequent communicators to private research circles, private automatists and others, but it is an undeniable fact that in public circles our leading exponents now never admit that any of the spirits who communicate have been anything but mortals whose end was normal, or more recently, those who were killed in battle.

There is more in Spiritualism than the mere assurance to inquiries that life on the other side is very beautiful, that vocations similar to those on earth are followed there and that there is a steady upward progression.

These things dominate the minds of a certain section of the English Spiritualists, and their tacit negation of the other darker side of the revelations is entirely contrary to French, Russian, and certain Latin-American schools of thought.

The history of all religions and analysis of their tenets reveal one great outstanding fact. There has always been an element of fear and terror connected with all conceptions of the after-life. There is nothing in revealed Spiritualism to suggest that abstract justice is more prevalent on the next plane than on this imperfect earth. The very fact of the admitted existence of bad and evil spirits capable of malice, is in itself fatal to the bed of rose-leaves theories.

In science it is the abnormal properties of a new gas, compound, or element that lead scientists to study it, so in the realm of psychic science it is only through close study of the abnormal that we can attain to any clear idea of the normal.

It has been cast at me as a reproach that I have pursued vain and extraordinary paths of research, not disdaining to delve into dark secrets of occultist ritual whose proceedings would be unorthodox and blasphemous if laid bare to the orthodox and anæmic Spiritualist circles of Balham.

Yet Shamonnism is Spiritualism, and the old schools of sorcery and art magic held psychic secrets that are still reproducible but yet inexplicable in these twentieth-century days.

One of the most wonderful automatists I ever met was the late Jules Carrier. A tall, spare figure, black-bearded, aquiline-nosed, vividly pale in complexion, he had dark hazel eyes with brown mottled rings about the pupil that suggested in a vague way something feline or leopard-like.

I met him quite by chance in a bookshop in the Rue de Valenciennes whose proprietor had written to me about some curious early nineteenth-century manuscripts that had come into his possession.

These books consisted of some rather commonplace manuscripts of certain philosophical transactions dealing with occult phenomena. Paris in the early thirties of the last century was seamed with secret organizations devoted to scientific and political studies. The great impulse of the Revolution had produced in turn Napoleon and then the Bourbon reaction. The strong arm of the clerical party drove the philosophers underground, and only from time to time can one find these peculiar archives of occultist activity in odd booksellers’ shops and the libraries of students.

The proprietor of the shop knew my interest in these matters and had before been at pains to secure me certain personal souvenirs from his library of Eliphas Levi,[4] so whenever an odd “Grimoire,” or early matter on occultism fell to his lot he would put it by against my next visit.

He it was who introduced Carrier to me as a fellow-student, but he made it abundantly clear that Carrier was too poor to be a book buyer and that he himself looked on him as a peculiar acquaintance rather than as a customer.

We fell into conversation, and I was delighted to find that Carrier had a wide and erudite knowledge of early books on magical practice. This he told me he had gained principally by spare-time study at the Librairie de Paris, but also from the loan of books from friends. He had, it appeared, catalogued several private collections of works on psychic and supernormal subjects.

I took him off to lunch with me at the Café Bastien, and he explained that he was completing a catalogue or bibliography of books on magic published previously to 1850. “There are,” said he, “a number of missing works referred to by contemporary authors. Of these there is little knowledge, but little by little I am rewriting them.”

“Automatic writing or original deductive work?” I asked him.

“Automatic--_pur et simple_,” he replied. “My control is called Fernand de Féques and was a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Barnabe near Blagues. Thanks to his help, I have recovered amazing things that were lost.”

He sank his voice as he told me and his leopard eyes seemed to glow golden as the wine in his glass. “I know the secrets of the lost inner ritual of the Illuminati,” he told me. “I have recovered Pietro Zarantino’s invocation, and could I only master ancient Greek I could lay the secrets of the Bacchæ bare. But their confused script paralyses my hand and I must keep to French and Latin.”

I knew too much of the vast breadth and heritage of knowledge that the Hermetic philosophers inherited from the Gnostics to doubt his words. Revealed knowledge may sometimes appear to be withdrawn for a while, but it will inevitably be re-disclosed.

Having an appointment to keep, I made a note of his address and promised to resume our acquaintanceship on another day.

A week later I had had leisure to go through my manuscripts. They were very interesting, but verbose, and were full of curiously involved obliquities of meaning and contained some peculiar Hebrew charms of Kabbalistic significance. By either bad luck or the design of some earlier owner, two pages of the invocatory ritual for the raising of the spirits of the dead were missing.

It occurred to me that Carrier might be able to fill the gap by means of automatic writing, so I wrote to him suggesting the attempt and asking him to my rooms. He replied by return, expressing his willingness to help, and adding that his control had assented, but desired me to visit him in his own rooms in order that he might not be disturbed by novel surroundings.

The next night I went to Carrier’s. He lived in one of those dull meandering streets that rise from the mass of the city toward Montparnasse. The house was an old tumble down warren, dirty and ill-kept, the various floors let out in rooms or suites of apartments to tenants who were none too particular in their choice of lodging. By the light of a match I examined the grimy cards pinned in the hallway, and at last located Carrier’s name as owner of the back room on the third floor.

He opened to my knock and I found myself in a room which made no pretension to disguise the poverty of its tenant. Most of his furniture was books. A globeless gas jet burnt feebly over a side table on which were some dishes and there was an old and uncleanly box bed in the corner. In the centre of the room was a heavy old fashioned circular pedestal table and on this he had laid out glasses, a bottle of wine, and paper.

He showed me his books, and for a while we discussed Guldenstubbé.[5] I looked at some of his automatic writings that gave interpretations of some aspects of Etteilla and was in particular interested in a new rendering of his Book of Thoth.[6]

In the meantime Carrier was glancing through the imperfect MS. that I had brought with me.

“This is rather different from most of the books of the period,” said he. “It is more like a note-book of lectures or a précis of an existing magical ritual as performed by a small child. What do you make of it?”

“That is just how it struck me,” I told him. “It is about the period of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. The writer might have been one of the adepts trained by Francis Barret, by Cagliostro, or by Dom Gerle, but it might even be as late as Madame Lenormand.”

“Hardly 1815, I think,” said Carrier, “but no matter. The interesting thing is that this writer seems to have shorn his ritual of lots of the inessential matters. For instance, in this matter of the invocation of simple elements he has resolutely reduced his formula to mere essentials. Two kinds of the wearisome Hebrew prayers are gone and the actual mechanical adjuncts to the invocation are simplified.

“His consecrations too are limited simply to the repetition of words of power. This man had in his way reduced his art magic to what one may term working formulæ.”

“Sometime I will experiment with them,” I told him, “but for the present let us see if we can recover the ritual on the missing pages.”

Carrier soon passed under control. His mouth seemed to fall slack and open in rather ghastly fashion and the eyeballs turned up under the lids so that though he wrote with half-opened eyes; only the blue-tinted white of the eyeballs could be seen under his heavy lids. His hand and forearm began to twitch spasmodically, but the pencil stayed almost immobile on the paper forming a little knot of scratches, but no letters. Finally I saw that he had completely entered the trance state and was directly under control.

“Who is the author of these manuscripts?” I asked.

Without a pause the pencil wrote rapidly in a sharp angular script: “Marcel Theot, Adept and Minor Master of the Arcana.”

“Under whom did you study?”

“Under the divine Giuseppe Balsamo Count Cagliostro, the Grand Copt of the Universe, and later under Doctor Jules Lemercier pupil of Lavater and Cagliostro.”

“Will you reveal to us the missing pages of your manuscript?” The answer was unexpected.

“To you two,” the pencil wrote, “I can reveal these secrets, for you too are initiate and know what progress is permitted to the children of men. This I say unto you. In the third decade of this century shall there be a revival of art magic, but much that has been sealed to the philosophers shall be known to the healers of men.”[7]

The control revealed a complete and up-to-date knowledge of movements in the world of psychic research and the refrain of the communications was ever the same. “These things were known before, but mankind had not the sense to apply the doctrines and practice.”

At length the control took up the actual communication of the missing portion of the ritual and Carrier’s automatic script changed entirely from his own angular, large-lettered, trim, and straggly lettering to the staid precise well-formed handwriting of the original manuscript.

All went well until it came to the names of God, which had to be written in Hebrew characters in the corners of the triangle within the pentagon of the president of the air. Carrier’s hand struggled with the attempt to produce the letters, but the characters would not form. There was a moment of indecision, and then I saw hovering over the table a small lambent sphere of bluish light.

The room, remember, was lighted by a gas jet and we were not in darkness, but clear and distinct the flickering globe of blue light formed over the table, then descended to wrap round Carrier’s hand and pencil.

With it there seemed to come an impression of intense cold, then there formed within the light a plainly visible hand bearing a curiously wrought talismanic ring. This hand took the pencil and wrote the names in Hebrew characters VEVAHLIAH, ANIEL, and MUMIAH, then withdrew again.

While the rest of the ritual was being written the globe of light into which the hand had redissolved hovered over the table, but at the end of the script when Carrier’s hand fell idle it returned and materializing again wrote in bold script in ordinary Latin characters:

“The dead ye will summon, but Nahemah will answer, for I too am a creature of the fire and it is only on the underplanes that I command.”

Once again the globe of fire redissolved the hand, then the whole ascending toward the ceiling appeared to expand, dissipate and vanish away. Carrier came round and I boiled him up a glass of hot water, which, with a liberal dash of wine, soon restored him to himself.

Together we went over the script while I told him of the curious phenomenon that I had witnessed.

“That may account for the way my hand is aching,” he said. “I thought it was more than usual,” and spreading his hand out in front of him we both noticed for the first time that both the first joint of the thumb and the nail and first joint of the forefinger were actually swollen and bruised.

“This Marcel Theot seems to be a terrible fellow,” said he ruefully.

“It is the last part of the message that he has attached to the ritual that puzzles me,” I said. “Assuming that he is actually a bad spirit, he yet seems to be able to repeat the construction of a protective circle of exorcism in which the names of God are frequently repeated and which is in itself supposed to be demon-proof and then warns us that Nahemah will answer. Nahemah is the spirit queen who presides over the female devils of obsession--the Succubi. Thus Carrier, my friend, I do not quite see what to expect.”

“The Succubi,” said Carrier, “are known to be able to assume the forms of the most desirable of women. This Marcel Theot studied thaumaturgy and magic under Cagliostro and his followers, and you know to what amazing practices the Grand Copt set his female devotees. It is probable that the invocation in its peculiarly condensed style opens the doors to dangers that are not present when the full ritual is applied. You notice that he styles himself minor master.”

I agreed, and later analysis of the ritual as compared to others showed that in the process of condensation many of the safeguarding ceremonies and propitiatory invocations had been discarded.

My own opinion is that Marcel Theot was one of that numerous class of people who undertook the study of magic only in order to obtain the supernatural qualification of carnal desires. In any case I have deemed his ritual unsafe for experiment and have taken steps so that it can never fall into unsuitable hands.

The actual materialism of a spirit hand to aid automatic writing is such an unusual occurrence that to my mind it completely disposes of any theory of other than spirit knowledge being applied in this particular case.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] I carried out a long series of experiments with the idea of developing an automatic recorder operating on the lines of the familiar tape machine, and experimented at length both in London and in Paris, where my work was done in connection with the student Du Plessis, who was one of the heroes who gave his life at Verdun. Latterly we abandoned the idea of an actual print-registering machine for a device designed to register impulses on a wax cylinder, something on the lines of a phonograph. Some results were obtained, but the machine was not successful or reliable.

[3] It is a saddening and depressing thought to think of a recently passed over spirit racing from medium to medium in an attempt to get through bits of messages to an individual on this plane. The spirit of F. W. H. Myers had to communicate through mediums as distant as Mrs. Holland in India and Mrs. Verrall at Cambridge. Later communications were received in complex fashion from other sources and the whole had to be collected by the Research Officer of the S.P.R. before they made any sense at all. _Proceedings S.P.R._, Vols. XX to XXV inclusive.

[4] The library and papers of Alphonse Louis Constant are, I believe, still in existence but inaccessible.

[5] Baron de Guldenstubbé. _La Réalité des Esprits et le Phénomène Merveilleux de leur Ecriture Directe._ 1857.

[6] _Les Sept Nuances de l’Œuvre Philosophique Hermétique._ Leçons Théoriques et Pratique du Livre de Thot. 1786.

[7] This would seem to point to the present research in psychology and psychotherapeutics and its applications to cases of “shell shock” and kindred mental disturbances.